Just want to throw some beer-geek-turned-pro-brewer knowledge into the mix here...



So, we've rated some 4000+ beers (the three of us Pipeworkers together) plus all the 10's of thousands of other bottles we've probably consumed in the process and I can't remember any bottles exploding in my cellar that weren't infected or done with fruit (i.e. still had some potential for fermentation).



Well, we learned very quickly, within the first week of distributing our own beer, that there seems be some acceptable bottle breakage in the beer industry that isn't exactly front-page news. We found that 1 out of 2000 or so bottles were having issue. We knew there was no way an infection would take hold like that and bust bottles that quickly, there wasn't anything left in the beer to ferment normally anyway, and the carb levels were all well within manufacturer recommended specs.



We immediately contacted the manufacturer about the problem and were told that there is an expected small percentage of bottle breakage due to defects in the glass manufacturing that just can't be weeded out. Large packaging breweries (Labatt for instance) has a bottle break on the line every 12 seconds due to this type of problem. So... having open, stored, drank and rated 10's of thousands of beer and not seen this problem it was somewhat confusing...



Those minor defects, combined with a finicky capper or general stress from shipping/handling the bottles (both empty, and full, to the distributor and then to the stores) can cause bottles to fracture at anytime, usually after a temperature (pressure) change.



Scared the crap out of us since we never came across it as raters (vocal drinkers). However, I guess it's just part of the beer industry. So the point is, no reason to rush to judgement about DL being infected, it could simply be a defective bottle, which is what it sounds like with the description of the break, clean at the neck?

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