How can fermentation break glass if there’s no increase in matter in the bottle?

Question

I’m thinking of like when you bottle wine that’s still fermenting, and it explodes. I understand that the fermentation process raises the air pressure inside the bottle. What I *don’t* understand is how? When you pump air into a balloon, the air pressure rises because there are *more* air molecules entering the balloon.

With wine in a bottle, you have a fixed amount of matter at a certain temperature. I don’t understand how fermentation could increase air pressure in a closed system?

In: Physics

Answer 1

There’s an increase in *pressure*. CO2 is a gas so takes up a lot more space than it did as sugar. Vessels can only handle so much pressure before they explode.