some weirdness

I have an oatmeal stout bottled.. I was asked to bring soem hom brew to a party last night and took a couple of each kind I have bottled. Anyway they went nuts over the oatmeal stout which I hadn't tried yet.. I got home and opened one and it was AWFUL... I don't know the proper description but astringent sounds right..plus a huge foamy ( pop like) head............. This is the third time I have opened individual bottles that were "off" and the rest of the batch be fine.....my sanitation process seems fine and this was a new bottle that was cleaned and sanitized.

It's possible that the one bottle you opened was infected, or your friends were just being overly polite. Try another bottle and see if it's the same way.

whatsleftofyou said:

It's possible that the one bottle you opened was infected, or your friends were just being overly polite. Try another bottle and see if it's the same way.

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trying one now it is GOOD!!! NICE HEAD WITHOUT THE CHURNING...no weird tastes.

Yep, looks like you probably just had a bad bottle. Good thing it's just an odd bottle or two and it wasn't something that made it into the whole batch. Maybe your friends weren't just being nice after all

or an unsanitary cap?

third time this has happened ...two different batches. I drop my caps into starsan and put em directly onto the filled bottles out of the starsan....I think maybe I need to tear my bottling bucket completely apart before the next batch.

I always boil my bottle caps. Starsan should do it, but it doesn't take any extra time to boil them, and I like having the peace of mind.

how are you sanitizing your bottles? and those spigots on the bottling bucket come completely apart for a thorough cleaning.

android said:

how are you sanitizing your bottles? and those spigots on the bottling bucket come completely apart for a thorough cleaning.

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bottles are all cleaned after use ( rinsed with hot water) then stored in a covred tub....when bottling time comes I line em up on the table and squirt em with starsan using a vinator...do at least 2 squirts...then fill and cap with caps that were in the vinator "trough"

Another vouch for the Vinator. I haven't needed to use my bottle brush since I bought mine.

What's your process for priming ? Are using a bottling bucket and thoroughly mixing prior to filling the bottles? Did the bottles that were "weird" seem over carbonated?

Frank99 said:

What's your process for priming ? Are using a bottling bucket and thoroughly mixing prior to filling the bottles? Did the bottles that were "weird" seem over carbonated?

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I follow revvys bottling thread to a T.....boil priming sugar, pour in the bottling bucket then rack beer into that. ......but yes the off flavored beers were foamy. Not creamy head foamy like a good beer but soda foamy and "churning" in the glass.

I know you said your sanitary practices are good, but there's clearly nothing wrong with the batch as the problem is only happening to some, not all the bottles. I seriously doubt there's an issue with the caps as long as you have them stored in a clean, dry area. When I was bottling (now I'm kegging) I would clean the bottles and hold them up to a bright light to see if they were totally clean inside. If you're not doing this you'd be surprised how any sort of mold/bacteria hold on to the sides of a bottle. You may think you've scrubbed it clean, but if you're not actually looking into the bottle (hold up to light), you can't be 100% sure...

Frank99 said:

I know you said your sanitary practices are good, but there's clearly nothing wrong with the batch as the problem is only happening to some, not all the bottles. I seriously doubt there's an issue with the caps as long as you have them stored in a clean, dry area. When I was bottling (now I'm kegging) I would clean the bottles and hold them up to a bright light to see if they were totally clean inside. If you're not doing this you'd be surprised how any sort of mold/bacteria hold on to the sides of a bottle. You may think you've scrubbed it clean, but if you're not actually looking into the bottle (hold up to light), you can't be 100% sure...

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yep I do that.

I think you need to isolate the problem. When you're bottling are you keeping track of the ones you bottle first and last? The reason I'm asking is when I was bottling the last few bottles always had more residual sediment (yeast) that settled in the bottles. The dormant yeast settled to the bottom of my bottling bucket and wound up in my last few bottles as I tried to bottle every last drop! What you're actually tasting might be yeast. The reason these seem overcarbonated is they have more yeast than the other bottles and they're producing more carbon dioxide during the bottle conditioning phase. The "astringent" taste and over carbonation seem like what I experienced. Try keeping track of your bottles (I lined them up from 1st to last) and see where these bottles are going bad.

Even if your sanitation procedure is perfect it is still possible to get a "gusher" yeast in a bottle just from floating around in the air. I've had one or two in a batch of 100 and it is hard to explain to your friends that the rest are OK.

Something's getting in, you've just not thought of it yet.

Your kid dropping in little bits of buckeyes in while you're not looking?
You cat which is all over the kitchen whenever you are in there?
Some got washed in the dishwasher? Plenty of residual soap in there even if you don't use it for the bottle wash.

I've eliminated bottle-to-bottle inconsistency by doing the following:

1. After my PBW-filled carboy is ready for use on Brew Day, instead of dumping the PBW down the drain I save 4.5 gallons of the PBW in a 5-gallon bucket.

2. As I cracking a bottle of homebrew, I rinse the bottle and then submerge it in the bucket filled with PBW.

3. When the bucket filled with PBW is full of bottles I scrub each bottle briefly with a bottle brush, rinse three times with hot water and then place them on my drying rack to dry.

4. When the bucket full of PBW no longer has any bottles in it I diligently work to refill it by drinking more homebrew.

The advantages are that I don't have to wash all of the bottles at once, I don't have to work to remove labels from commercial brews because they fall right off with only a few hours of soaking, I am assured that anything and everything a mere rinse will miss has been cleaned from the bottle, and I can reuse the PBW instead of immediately dumping it down the drain after washing a carboy.

I'm guessing he's figured it out by now since it's over 4 1/2 years later.

whatsleftofyou said:

I'm guessing he's figured it out by now since it's over 4 1/2 years later.

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LOL in other news America has voted in the first black president!


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