My Nut Brown Ale is overcarbonated

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zacster

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I reported here a few weeks back that my nut brown ale was gushing and foaming in the glass. I tried a few more after and they seemed OK once they were cold. But now every one I open gushes and is just too fizzy.

I assume I put too much bottling sugar in. Should I have lowered the amount of sugar since this was a higher gravity to start, 1.060? The FG was 1.014, so it should have been ok, but should I have used less? I used the pre-measured amount that came with the kit, 5oz I think. The instructions just say to use it all.

On top of this I don't particularly like it anyway, it has a medicinal taste, cloves I think (I also started that Virginia Ham thread about it). So all in all, not a very good beer. I think I got a little overconfident with it. It still won't go to waste.

My next brew was an ESB that is just starting to be drinkable and this one has no noticeable problems and is really good.
 
How much sugar and what kind of sugar did you use....

How much volume did you have 3 gal 4 gal 4.5gal 5 gal..Do you know for sure

I think you still had some fermentable sugar in your brew how long from pitch date until bottle date....

What temp what your nut brown fermented at?
 
The Viginia Ham/Band aid/Clove taste coupled with the gusher makes me think you have a gusher infection. Do all the bottles gush when opened now?
 
I checked the notes and it was 4oz. of corn sugar in a 5 gallon batch. It was in the primary for 10 days, secondary for 2.5 weeks. Temps were in the range of 66-68. I used my plastic bucket on that batch, but then switched to using a carboy on the next one for primary. I also switched from using bleach to StarSan. I've never trusted the bucket, although it appears clean and unscratched and had no lingering odor.

Not all the bottles are gushing, but they all seem overcarbonated.

Like I already said, it won't go to waste, it just isn't great. The batch is already half gone.
 
I'm not the best with my measurement conversions 4 ounces is roughly half a cup.

When bottling I prime with a fat 3/4 cup of sugar and my carbonation comes out perfect IMO.

I'll check your other thread here in a bit but did you mix the priming sugar with your wort well before you bottled?
 
sounds like an infection... happened to the first batch I made with my friend earlier this year.

Do you happen to see a ring at the top of the fluid levels inside your bottles by chance? that's a tell-tale sign of infection if it's already been bottled.
 
I'm not seeing a ring on the bottles, but some of the bottles are cloudy. I'm not sure if I can correlate cloudiness with gushing. As for mixing, I used the usual method of boiling the sugar for 5-10 minutes and dumping into the bottling bucket. I then siphoned with the hose at the bottom to make it swirl.

Now that I'm thinking about it the one thing that did happen was the siphon was screwed up in the middle of one of the transfers, I think to the bottle. Maybe there's a group of bottles that got infected when this happened? It is hard to say if I really touched anything I shouldn't have.
 
I don't completely subscribe to the idea that the ring around the neck means it's infected. I've seen that before on my brews and they're fine.

Do you have an autosiphon or how do you start your racking?
 
I've been either sucking on a carboy cap with the hose through the other hole (as in the sticky) or filling the hose with sanitizer and placing one end in the beer. I then let the sanitizer run out into a sanitized bowl. I lost the siphon that time where the hose was attached to the racking cane, it wasn't pushed all the way on.
 
I don't completely subscribe to the idea that the ring around the neck means it's infected. I've seen that before on my brews and they're fine.

Do you have an autosiphon or how do you start your racking?

I've also had infected beers without the ring. I have to agree with the other posts that this sounds like an infection given the off taste and over carbonation. We all have them, especially in the beginning.

GT
 
If it is infected it must have happened during bottling as it was fine when I tasted it before. Maybe my bottle cleaning isn't thorough enough, or when i lost the siphon.

Beer happens.
 
I had a couple gushers with a nut brown recipe.

The rest (44 outta 46 12ozers) were perfect. The gusher's had a vinegar flavor, so I figured the two bottles must have got infected...

speaking of nut brown; I highly recommend the Brian Miller recipe from the old Coyote Springs in Phoenix, Arizona.
 
Now I'm convinced it happened during bottling. I opened up two tonight that were in Grolsch bottles and both were good, no gushing, no off tastes. These bottles we done first in the batch and I only had 4. I hope the second case (but maybe first bottled) is better as well, I haven't tried any bottles from it yet.
 

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