Over-carbonation...what happened?

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hopdropper

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So I recently brewed a Scottish Wee Heavy...OG 1.086, FG 1.018. The brew sat in the primary for three weeks on a massive yeast cake (pitched the wort onto an existing Wyeast 1728 cake from previous batch). Was in the secondary four about a month. Bottler 'er up, and let sit for three more weeks. Know I know this beer is supposed to age for a bit, and most of it will be cellared for six months, but I had to try one (or two) just to see how it turned out. Well both bottles foamed up REAL heavily when I popped the cap. And when poured, it's mostly foam (like 90% of the pint glass). If you let the beer sit four about 10 minutes in the bottle, it calms down just fine and is totally pourable. Flavor tastes like it should....no off flavors like it's spoiled or contaminated. It's just DAMN bubbly. Any ideas? Might that mellow with age? Maybe a product of too much residual yeast suspended in the beer? Or do I have a contamination issue that isn't producing off flavors (yet)?
Thanks for the input!
 
How long did you chill them? Bottles really need to chill 48 hours to absorb all the trapped CO2 into solution and then stabilize.
 
malkore, good question...i'm trying to remember, it may have been WAY shorter than that. i don't have room to store much of the homebrew in the fridge. so sometimes when i get home, i'll pull a bottle out of the garage (where it's maybe between 50 and 55, depending on the day) and stick it in the freezer for an hour to cool it down.
that said, i really think my last bottle that fizzed had been in the fridge a couple days. worth an experiment though...
 
Maybe you should have left it in secondary a little longer? How did you transfer from secondary to bottling bucket? If you didn't siphon carefully you may have transferred more yeast than you should have? I don't know honestly...
 
heck, i figured a month in the primary was more than enough...but maybe with that big of a beer it needed longer.
 
guess it needed longer. bottle-bombs. that's right...just went to garage and 4 of my 22 oz bottles blew up. what a freeking mess. cracked the tops on all the other bottles to release pressure, then re-capped. we'll see how that goes.
 
I discovered after using brewing software that 5oz is WAY TOO MUCH priming for many types of beer. I'd suggest a priming calc or getting some brew programs--saves so much hassle!

EDIT: the bulk of your fermentation was done long before a month and 1.018 is a respectable FG for the style, so I don't think more time in the fermenter would have helped. In fact, that's a good argument in my mind for using mrmalty.com to calculate your yeast amounts--waaaay too much yeast + too much sugar = boom!

EDIT2: I just checked a similar recipe in my software--2.98oz priming sugar for 5gal.
 
I discovered after using brewing software that 5oz is WAY TOO MUCH priming for many types of beer. I'd suggest a priming calc or getting some brew programs--saves so much hassle!

EDIT: the bulk of your fermentation was done long before a month and 1.018 is a respectable FG for the style, so I don't think more time in the fermenter would have helped. In fact, that's a good argument in my mind for using mrmalty.com to calculate your yeast amounts--waaaay too much yeast + too much sugar = boom!

EDIT2: I just checked a similar recipe in my software--2.98oz priming sugar for 5gal.

How would you know that without knowing the temp that his beer was at?
 
5oz is a lot of priming sugar for a wee heavy. Under mos circumstances 5oz is what you would use for a hefe or other high carbed beer in the 3 volumes range (depending on your temperature)

If you were a little shy on total volume (less than 5 G post secondary) you might have simply added too much priming sugar. If 22's are breaking that means you are going well past 3.0 volumes on your carb. I haven't seen a 22 rated for less than 3 volumes capacity (though I am sure they are out there.)

IMO your ferment time was more than adequate, the issue was when it came to priming. What temp did you prime at?

My first thought was wait another week (for the co2 to absorb), but if bottles are blowing up that rules that theory out.
 
How would you know that without knowing the temp that his beer was at?

I made 3 or 4 points, so I'm not 100% sure what you're asking. Given the temperature part of your question, though, I'm assuming you mean, "How do you know that his fermentation was done?"

If so, that's easy. In the majority of healthy fermentations, the bulk of it is done in 4-5 days. And that's not really temp dependent. Now a major underpitching may drag out fermentation a few more days, but he used AN ENTIRE CAKE... and even with underpitching it's usually over (for good or ill) within ten days. That's definitely not temperature dependent.

Keep in mind that I'm using the word "fermentation" literally. That's different from conditioning (or clean up), but after FG is reached the yeast aren't doing anything that's going to prevent a bottle bomb.

Cheers!
 
IMO your ferment time was more than adequate, the issue was when it came to priming. What temp did you prime at?
I missed it first time through (hence the multi-edits on my earlier post) but the OP used an entire cake. That much yeast wasn't sated, I'm sure, even by the malt in a Wee Heavy... and when it got 2oz of extra sugar, I expect that explains the 22oz bomb-ers. :cross:
 
I missed it first time through (hence the multi-edits on my earlier post) but the OP used an entire cake. That much yeast wasn't sated, I'm sure, even by the malt in a Wee Heavy... and when it got 2oz of extra sugar, I expect that explains the 22oz bomb-ers. :cross:


The amount of yeast used in carbing really isn't a factor in creating bottle bombs. You determine your carb by the temp you are carbing at AND the amount of sugar. You can use a carbing calculator like northern brewers, mr. malty etc.

i.e. more yeast doesn't = more fermentation/bottle bombs. It just means potentially a quicker fermentation in the bottle.
 
So I suspect it was the "perfect storm" of mistakes on my part. The FG was appropriate at 1.018, however, like I mentioned in the original post, I racked that wort on to a MASSIVE yeast cake (my first, and last, experiment with re-using yeast). I can't remember exactly, but I think I probably only had about 4.5 gallons (or less) of beer to bottle. And I know I used the full 5 oz of priming sugar. Those bottles sat out at around 60-65 degrees in the garage for the last month or so, priming like crazy. When I popped the tops on the remaining bottles yesterday, it was a virtual "Old Faithful" geyser of beer. I couldn't believe it....every single one literally erupted out of the bottle. I'm truly surprised more bottles didn't break. Anyway, I know have a bunch of half-full, re-capped bottles of Wee Heavy. Going to give them another week, try one for flavor/carbonation...and decide if I need to just dump and start from scratch.
Chalk it all up to lesson learned.
 
Oh, and for the last couple batches I've bottled, I've made an effort to measure exact volume of beer, and add 1 oz priming sugar per gallon.
 
actually one more question for you guys (i'm new to this and still learning). how long does that yeast stay suspended in the secondary? i know carbonation happens from the yeast converting the priming sugar to booze and CO2, and by "capping" the CO2 goes into solution....but say a beer sits in a secondary for two months. is there still enough yeast in suspension to effectively carb the brew? thanks for all the input and advice.
 
Piratwolf said:
I made 3 or 4 points, so I'm not 100% sure what you're asking. Given the temperature part of your question, though, I'm assuming you mean, "How do you know that his fermentation was done?"

If so, that's easy. In the majority of healthy fermentations, the bulk of it is done in 4-5 days. And that's not really temp dependent. Now a major underpitching may drag out fermentation a few more days, but he used AN ENTIRE CAKE... and even with underpitching it's usually over (for good or ill) within ten days. That's definitely not temperature dependent.

Keep in mind that I'm using the word "fermentation" literally. That's different from conditioning (or clean up), but after FG is reached the yeast aren't doing anything that's going to prevent a bottle bomb.

Cheers!

No, I mean how do you know how much sugar he needs? The fermentation temp affects the amount of residual carbon dioxide in the beer, which in turn affects how much sugar he needs to add.
 
I think you'll always have enough yeast in suspension, unless you use a clearing agent, or some kind of filtering device/process. I think you'd be surprised how much you stir up when you rack from secondary to bottling bucket.
 
pabloj13 said:
No, I mean how do you know how much sugar he needs? The fermentation temp affects the amount of residual carbon dioxide in the beer, which in turn affects how much sugar he needs to add.

Ah--good point! I assumed room temp around 69F. Should have noted that.
 
Hey gang,

I have carbed several beers with 5.0 oz of corn sugar with no issues. In fact, a Hef I did recently I used 8.0 oz of corn sugar for a 5gal batch and it was spot on. My last 2 batches were severely over carbed with 5.0 oz of sugar, looks like in my case it was a bottling infection caused by the bottling spigot. I didn't know it could be taken apart and once I did, it showed some minor gunk and we all know that any gunk can cause an infection.

Good luck with figuring out your issue

Toy4Rick
 
Toy4Rick said:
Hey gang,

I have carbed several beers with 5.0 oz of corn sugar with no issues. In fact, a Hef I did recently I used 8.0 oz of corn sugar for a 5gal batch and it was spot on. My last 2 batches were severely over carbed with 5.0 oz of sugar, looks like in my case it was a bottling infection caused by the bottling spigot. I didn't know it could be taken apart and once I did, it showed some minor gunk and we all know that any gunk can cause an infection.

Good luck with figuring out your issue

Toy4Rick

Hefe is a high carb style, like Saison. Makes sense.

I thought I had an infection causing gushers as well, but I'm drinking a bottle right now at almost six months and it's frickin' fantastic, just a mild carvonicbite from theovercarbonation. Still can't figure it out.
 
I have had gushers since moving to all grain. I never used more than 5 oz of corn sugar so I am going to bleach all my bottling equipment before my next batch. Along with that I am going to stir the crap out of the beer/priming sugar mixture. Never had this problem with extract but then again never had really delicious beer with extract either.
cheers
everyone
 
I have had gushers since moving to all grain. I never used more than 5 oz of corn sugar so I am going to bleach all my bottling equipment before my next batch. Along with that I am going to stir the crap out of the beer/priming sugar mixture. Never had this problem with extract but then again never had really delicious beer with extract either.
cheers
everyone

Make sure to keep your bottling equipment away from your grain if you are not doing so already. Grain has a lot of beasties on it and storing or milling it near your bottling equipment could be a problem. Just food for thought. :mug:
 
Make sure to keep your bottling equipment away from your grain if you are not doing so already. Grain has a lot of beasties on it and storing or milling it near your bottling equipment could be a problem. Just food for thought. :mug:

If you're cleaning and sanitizing your equipment before bottling, would that still be a problem?
 
If you're cleaning and sanitizing your equipment before bottling, would that still be a problem?

You are just increasing the change of an infection, in my opinion. Milled grain gets everywhere and I think your odds of avoiding infection will be better if you are cleaning a piece of equipment that is relatively clean and free of contaminants to begin with.

Yes, clean and sanitize, but keeping your equipment away from potential contaminants is also good practice.
 
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