G-G-G-Gushers!

Haha.. Yeah.

So I had a (clearly, without any doubt) lacto infection on my Sunday IPA, went ahead and bottled it up anyway. Despite the infection which made it to the bottles (if you hold one up to the light you can see the film layer formed at the crest of the liquid in the bottle neck) they behaved well for the first 4 weeks - however I went to open one last night, PSHHHHH!!! Beer volcano. Next one, same thing. Aaaand the next one. Seeing the trend here?

#5 poured like a semi-gusher champ, tasted like gold. #6 was a gusher.

I always rack onto my priming solution, I pride myself on the fact I've never had a single bottle bomb or awkward carbonation throughout a batch. I'm chalking this up to my first wild contaminant / infected gusher for sure.

Guess I'm not really asking a question or looking for advice, more sharing yet another new brewing experience of my own and speaking out to remind everyone new and experienced to always sanitize the hell out of EVERYTHING and if you question something, sanitize it again. Even being the cleanest brewer (I am a paranoid brewer, I sanitize everything numerous times through out a brew night), a little nasty in the wrong place at the right time can find a home in your brew. It's a battle out there, the war will be mine - I must have just turned my head on something I shouldn't have.

Cheers HBT, another one to mark off of the brew bucket list... Just bumming it happened to such a tasty beer.

A moment of silence for my Sunday IPA. Salute.

Sorry about the gushers. I also am religious about sanitation so never had an infection.

I do have a funny story about gushers. My wife would keep stuff on the top shelf of the fridge. She started having problems with stuff freezing so she started playing with the temp control. The cold air comes from the top and hits the top shelf first.She was moving ithe temp control in the wrong direction so the problem was getting worse. She eventually said that if I kept my beer on the top it would be easier for me. I gladly put them up there. I put a bunch of brews there and the ones that sat under the cold air vent would gush, but it took me about a week to figure it out. I was going crazy because not everyone would gush. I thouhgt I had an infection but could not figure out why it was only certain bottles. I finally figured out that the longer they sat there the colder they would get, almost freezing. If they were only there 24 hours they were fine but longer and they woulld gush, and it was only the ones that sat directly under the vent . I was freaked that I thought I had an infection. Once I lowered the temp. Problem solved. I did not tell my wife because I like having much easier acces to my beer.

Sometimes regular saccharomyces will form a tiny krausen in the bottle. I've found some strains do and some don't. Usually wild stuff always forms one though. It's doubtful you got a lactobacillus infection. Many (not all) lacto strains are not hop resistant and many (again, not all) lacto strains do not produce excess gas as part of fermentation. It's certainly possible but generally you can't look at an infection or taste it and just know what's there. Could be brett or some other wild yeast. Could be other bacteria. Could be a combination of several things.

Are you sure fermentation was complete before bottling?

Haha beergolf that's great, way to keep it silent for the convenience win

Here is the recipe - Sunday IPA

RAMaster - I'm positive it was complete having numerous readings at 1.013, it was in primary for 8 weeks + 10-14ish days for the dry hop, it was at this time I'm 99% positive it caught the infection, I didn't rack the beer onto the hops instead just adding the hops directly into the primary (didn't have a spare bucket, I've DH'd the primary before, didn't cause me any problems). Popped open the lid to rack to the bottle bucket and had a nice white film, bubbly, formed across the top of the liquid - I suppose a splash or something did me in.

As for the gushers, I really don't know the "exact" cause though it seems pretty up front. The infection made it to the bottles, that I'm sure of however like you said there are many other things that can cause the problem. All I know is the ones that don't gush too bad taste great, I put the remainder of the batch into my fridge last night and by golly I'm going to pop them one by one and drink everything I can that isn't a volcano.