Boom Boom Drench The Room

Occasionally some commenters really get into the wrting spirit and share. Here is a comment (number 119) form the popular elderflower champagne post that I thought worthy of greater exposure.

While reading listen to the wonderfully hypnotic sound track from the eeppy peeps that accompanies their classic diet fizzy brand drink and mentos experiments.

Hi – my nana always loved telling me about her home brew exploits and getting aunt ada sloshed on a weeknight….she used to love eldferflower champagne and I have been meaning to do some for many years.

For the last couple of years I have missed the flowers so made great use of the berries later in the year to make some luscious elderberry vino.

I had a couple of scary moments with my homebrew exploding – I had taken advice previously and filled lots of tiny glass wine bottles, and many 2 litre plastic screw tops…..

….not long after bottling – fermentation must have started again….the 2litre plastic bottles felt like rocks – I held it in the fermentation bucket in case it exploded – BOOM! in a milisecond my hands were empty – the bucket was no where to be seen, my friend was stood on one leg with one eye closed dripping all down one side with sticky purple – I looked down at myself – i was covered from head to foot in purple and stood in a lake of it – we were both frozen to the spot with our mouths hanging open in absolute disbelief of what we were seeing – i looked around the previously cream kitchen…..purple was dripping off the ceiling, off the cupboards, downs the walls, looked like a massacre!

After stripping off where I stood and leaving my friend to start mopping up the insane mess using all of my best bath towels – I took the other bottles outside into the yard at arms length like unexploded bombs….took a towel and opened them all under the towel back into the bucket….half exploded in my hands again, covering me top to toe in streaks of blood coloured elderberry wine..the doorbell went, aargh! and the poor gas man nearly fell over where he stood – he took one look at me, went white as a sheet ‘holy moses are you alright pet?’ thinking I had suffered some terrible injury with elderberries dripping down my face/arms/legs.

Once the colour had returned to his face he recounted tales of his own homebrew exploding under the stairs.

anyway – it took a week to clean the kitchen – i then had to re-paint it, and we were still finding purple oozing out from skirting boards and light fittings in the kitchen for two years afterwards.

(the rebottled result of this debaucle is lush though!)

So – I am about to embark on elderflower champagne. I bought those ikea bottles someone earlier was talking about thinking, well – glass screw tops didnt work, plastic bottles nearly blinded my friend, maybe those glass swing tops might work.

Now I am seriously worried! I would rather have a VERY VERY slightly sparkling (rather than fizzy) champagne than have any more dramatic explosions.

So – can I ask you lovely people if you think that:

1 – I leave it to ferment in the bucket for a week or so, will it be less fizzy?

2 – If I put it in these glass swing tops and store them in the cellar (cool and dark) will it be less fizzy when I come to open them?

3 – If I open them when the bottles are really cold will that help prevent the bottle exploding in my hands!?? I am assuming that gases expand with heat, so if I keep them chilled the gases should be smaller by volume?

4 – I will make sure the bottles are all covered in something so if they do explode they wont be flying through the floor of my living room!

5 – OR – is there something else I can make out of this bucket of elderflowers/sugar/water/lemons…..(smells really nice!)

I am an absolute chicken.

6 – what if, after having bottled the volatile liquid into the swing tops – if I left the swing tops off and put a balloon over the necks of them? I have heard people do this with demi johns if they dont have an air lock – maybe with a pin hole in it (but then the gas would escape wouldnt it?)

hmm, i am worried about my 20 litres currently steeping in my (recently painted) kitchen!

By the way – the berries this year will be made into marmalade. I am not brewing anything with a colour ever again.