Periodically I will “cellar” some stronger beers since they get better with age.  Obviously I don’t have a wine room so the basement closet is where they go.  It’s also where I store the extra homebrewed beers that I have made.  To be honest, I’ve been surprised I haven’t had a bottle explosion due to over-carbonation or some other factor.

Until yesterday.

Stone Brewing, revered among the beer geek world, became available in Georgia this week.  I had purchased some bottles, one of which happened to be the Smoked Porter.  Since I tend not to drink darker beer until the weather gets cooler, I stuck it in the closet with the intention of putting it in the fridge maybe a month from now.

I got a call from Megan saying her shoes were soaked and there were shards of glass everywhere.   Several of our shoes might be beyond repair and it sprayed the wall and door and tagged my Rockband guitar and drum set and my Guitar Hero guitar too.  Sure enough, one of the bottles had broken, but not in the way I expected it to be.  Instead of what I assumed would have been a blown top and/or entirely shattered bottle, only a portion of the bottle had blown out and the cap remained.  To me this means there was structural damage with the glass itself.  Take a look for yourself and draw your own conclusions.

Epic Fail.