h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Help! I've made this, following the recipe to the letter, but two of the Grolsch style glass beer bottles blew up - and when I say blowing up really do mean blowing up, big style! Anyone got any ideas what's going wrong?

There's an easy solution: buy one of these:

http://www.homebrewcentre.co.uk/product.asp?pID=459

The fluid in the little chamber will seal it, while letting excess gas bubble out so the pressure doesn't build up too much.

Thanks for the reply.

I've got a few for my wine demijohns but nothing that would fit a grolsch bottle. I guess I could just do a big batch but I thought that some fizz was required.

Is it possible that reducing the sugar would help, or maybe using a campden tablet to stop fermentation after a couple of weeks?

We used to make it, using glass bottles - but we always had to remember to release the pressure every day once the ginger beer was put into bottles. Or, when I think carefully, we might have used push in corks, which easily worked themselves out of the bottle under too much gas pressure. The method here uses plastic bottles, and not full at that. I suppose this is to stop any accidental explosions.

Perhaps you could try not tightening the metal clip around the grolsch bottle top until most of the fermentation has finished? Then when you're happy there's not much danger of further excess pressure you could seal it.

Our main problem was running out of the stuff,