Danger: UXB(eer)

[major_clanger]

About half an hour after I got in I heard a muffled but quite loud bang.

It definitely sounded as if it had come from within the flat so I looked around to see if I could find anything that had fallen over, but to no avail. So I concluded it must have been in one of the other flats after all, even though it had felt quite close.

Then a little later I noticed the smell of beer, so I did a more careful search. And I discovered that one of the bottles of specially-brewed beer from ms_cataclysm and R's wedding had exploded. It was lying on its side with the bottom blown out, cap still in place.

It had been sitting in a cabinet with a glass-fronted door. Looking around the door was closed but there were small spatters of beer over the partition opposite. I can only conclude that when the bottle exploded the overpressure had briefly blown the door open, allowing beer to spatter out; the noise I'd heard must have been it slamming back shut again.

Fortunately there was no damage beyond mopping up a pint of beer that had puddled under the cabinet. Several ornamental glass tankards of some sentimental value that had been next to the bottle survived (one even had an inch of beer in it!) as had two other bottles. Mindful of the evident force of the first one I gingerly wrapped them in a kitchen towel and transferred them to the sink.

Presumably this was the hot weather and a weak bottle. But the others are going into a plastic crate for now.

Comments

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

The description of this event sounds as if you've got a poltergeist who had been a barman in a past life. Which could be worse, come to think of it.

[beermat]

I have a solution for you : drink the beer! ;)

[woolymonkey.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly.

[murphys-lawyer.livejournal.com]

I recall the summer of '76, the traditional brewing of elderflower fizz, and a salutary lesson in why you should not use screw-cap bottles.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Exploding souvenirs.

Awesome.

Nevertheless, it is your duty to render these items safe and dispose of them responsibly: drink the beer!

[rosenkavalier.livejournal.com]

One of my bottles of homebrew recently did that - the bottle fractured in a very neat ring just above the base (and the top half then dropped back onto the base again - had it not been for the puddle of beer, I probably wouldn't have noticed that it had gone off...).

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

Surely beer banging the door and jumping into a glass is a sign: drink me!

[coth.livejournal.com]

Um, yours is probably better kept than we can manage, but the bottle we shared last week was not at its best, and we noted BBF date in April. We will be drinking up shortly.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Oops. I will warn the marquis, as we have a couple of these still, too.