Odd carbonation issues

So, my last batch of beer has ended up carbing in a very odd manner. Initially, I just thought it was very under-carbonated, since it was pretty much flat out of the bottle. I had several bottles that were seemingly flat. But I noticed that when I rinsed the sediment from the bottle (fill and shake method) that it developed a fair amount of pressure when I was shaking the bottle with my hand covering the opening.

So, I decided to test this interesting phenomenon.

I took a bottle and gently tipped it nearly bottom up. Then I turned it upright and tipped it the opposite direction, again nearly bottom up. This should gently disturb the sediment and yeast in the bottle. My first attempt, I also tapped the base of the bottle on my countertop and swirled just a tad. It ended up being a volcano! The next bottle I didn't swirl or tap, I just tipped the bottle. It ended up nicely carbed!

What's going on here? Is the yeast or sediment somehow trapping carbonation? Did I do something when I bottled? Anyone with some insight on this issue would be really appreciated.

Try doing the same thing with a beer without yeast in it and see what happens. You are essentially shaking up the beer before you pour it.
If you do this several days/weeks before opening, though, you might be helping carbonate by getting the yeast and priming sugar in suspension like rousing the yeast in a carboy.

The yeast will hold the same amount of carbonation as the beer because they are both being held at the same pressure in the bottle.
The bottle will probably develop pressure when you are rinsing if you rinse a cold bottle with warm water. The warm water causes the air in the bottle to become warm and thus expand, resulting in increased pressure in the bottle.

How long has the beer been bottle conditioning?
Do you let the bottles sit in your fridge for a couple days before drinking?

Bheher said:

How long has the beer been bottle conditioning?
Do you let the bottles sit in your fridge for a couple days before drinking?

Click to expand...

The beer has been in the bottle since 7/28/12. So, it's had plenty of time to carbonate and condition. I did put the bottles in the fridge several days ahead of time, the first go around. The second set of bottles were in the fridge for maybe a day.

The stirred up yeast become nucleation sites, popping CO2 out of solution. They're actually decarbonating the beers, something most folks try to avoid...

Cheers!

That definitely makes sense. Interesting! Any ideas as to how or why it happened? I'm curious as to why it didn't carbonate like a typical bottled beer.