bottles keep building pressure

SO I have been fighting off this problem for some time and something tells me that its not how things are supposed to work. My bottles beers keep building pressure. The first 3-8 weeks the beers are fine in the bottle over time they keep building pressure. I just opened some beers I forgot about that were 6 months old and they might as well have been champagne. It was carbonated to the point of being undrinkable.

Here is my process post boil/chill:
Primary for 2-4 weeks. If I need to clear the beer with a secondary its generally a 10 14 day primary with at least a 2 if not 3 week secondary.
My beers ferment in a temperature controlled fermentation chamber that I keep at 65 degrees.
When I bottle my bottles are scrubbed with a bottle brush and star-san. I then run them through the dishwasher and instead of soap I use a powdered no rinse food grade sanitizer. The LD Carlson stuff.
As soon as the dishwasher is done doing its thing I immediately begin bottling.
I have a spreadsheet the i sue to calculate the amount of priming sugar to use. When all is said and done I generally end up using about 3.5-4.5 ounces of priming sugar.
I bring 2 cups of distilled water to a boil as soon as it hits a boil I turn off the heat and add in the sugar and stir. I allow this to cool in a covered vessel that has been sanitized.
I add half of the priming solution to my bottling bucket then transfer the wort on top of it. When the bucket is roughly halfway full I add in the rest of the priming sugar. To aide in mixing I leave my transfer tubing around the edge of the bottling bucket during the transfer so the wort has a very gentle whirlpool to aide in mixing.
all tubing, caps, bottling wand, etc are soaked in sanitizer prior to use and I keep my caps soaking until they are crimped onto the bottle. I use this open bowl of sanitizer to keep my hands clean too during the process.
Bottles are stored in a closet, away from light and for the first two or three weeks if I don't have another beer going I keep them in the ferm chamber at 70.
The foaming happens no matter how long the bottles have been in the fridge. Two days two weeks or two months makes no difference

What the flip am I missing here or doing wrong?

Do you get any sour or grapefruit taste?

What yeasts have you used?

Are you doing wheat beers?

Sorry for all the questions.

I get a carbonation bite from them but if I let them mellow that dies down some. I generally use WLP001 for most of my beers or WYEAST English Ale. None of them are wheats. My beers are pretty boring run of the mill APA's Brown Ales, and Stouts.

The only thing I can come up with is there might be some nastiest hanging out somewhere but there is no evidence other than obnoxiously over carbed beer after a few weeks.

I'm on the other side,last two batches have hardly any carbonation

I jsut came across some beer that its the first time the bottles were used, there is one chilling out in the fridge. I figure it can tell me if its my bottles putting nasties into my beer.

Do you use a bottle jet washer for the inside of the bottles? I wonder with some of the brushes if you scrub out a bad bottle, and go to the next, are you adding stuff to the next bottle?

I use the dishwasher, but nothing, no chemicals of any kind. Make sure you don't have a rising agent (jet dry) in your dishwasher as it messes things up too.

Could be something else, but you seem to be following a good pattern.

Do you completely disassemble the bottling bucket spout for cleaning?

I disassemble it completely and give it a good soaking in star say with everything else, reassemble it put it ont he bucket and then sanitize my bucket and drain the sanizier through the spout, through my line and bottling wand into a growler that I keep the wand in when its not in use. The more and more I think about this I am starting to wonder if somehow I am not getting something out of the bottles.


The only other thing that pops into my head is I have been trouble with my mash temps and keeping them up. The only other thing that comes to mind is that from my mash temps dropping that more complex sugars are extracted from the beer causing it to continue to ferment very slowly. I feel like I am reaching with this one.

Bugs should give you off flavors. I don't think you have that going on.

Are you bottling at 65 degrees? You might consider adjusting your Specific gravity for your temperature. That is just ever so-slightly on the cool side. Your SG may actually be a tidge - wait no - getting warmer would lower that... Cooler temp might let some CO@ expand out at warmer temps, but then again you are chilling it in the fridge before drinking...

Is it every bottle? I had someone suggest to me a long time back - give the beer in the bottling bucket a swirl about three times during bottling to keep the priming sugar well mixed. I have arguments for/against that warring in my head.

Don't know if this has anything to do with your issue, but are you using star san like a cleaning agent? I would soak your bottles and spout in hot PBW to clean, then just sanitize everything with star san at bottling time - making sure there is at least a minute of contact time and the bottles are still wet when bottling. I wouldn't expect the sanitizer in a dishwasher to get up inside the bottles well. I think you need a sanitize setting to use the dishwasher to sanitize with heat.

The flip top bottle I found that had not been previously used was perfect. When I say perfect it was magnificent. I think there is something going on with the bottles. I do use starsan as a cleaning agent. I might try the pbw thing. After drinking from the other bottle the beer in the over carbed bottles is more on the sour side. I might have been mistaking it for the excessive carbonation. CO2 always tastes sour to me.

Before I do that I might just do a massive soak in bleach for a few days in a plastic tub, then clean then rinse and clean the milk crates I store bottle in.

After last nights experiment I think that its clear that it can only be one of two things, the bottles or the caps and I seriously doubt that its the bottle caps.

Star-San is for sanitizing, not cleaning.

Clean first, sanitize second.

I've had good luck with bleach although common opinion frowns on it.

I make sure everything is very well rinsed and has a chance to dry completely before I use it though.

MrMeans said:

I disassemble it completely and give it a good soaking in star say with everything else, reassemble it put it ont he bucket and then sanitize my bucket and drain the sanizier through the spout, through my line and bottling wand into a growler that I keep the wand in when its not in use. The more and more I think about this I am starting to wonder if somehow I am not getting something out of the bottles.

The only other thing that pops into my head is I have been trouble with my mash temps and keeping them up. The only other thing that comes to mind is that from my mash temps dropping that more complex sugars are extracted from the beer causing it to continue to ferment very slowly. I feel like I am reaching with this one.

Click to expand...

Any reason you don't just hand soak instead of using the dishwasher? Someone mentioned possibility of foreign cleaning agents. If you do have to use the washer, maybe try running it through with sanitizer before loading in the bottles. This may better sanitize the racks that rest against part of the inside of your bottle. Maybe a reach as well, but just a thought.

What temperature do you keep your fridge at? I had bottle bomb issues with a root beer I made. The champagne yeast kept carbonating in my fridge at 42F, and they would spray 7ft in the air. I have the scars on my hands from one exploding on me to prove it too.

Possibly you may not be getting the yeast cold enough to go dormant, and they may still be carbonating in the fridge. I use both yeasts your described, and have not had an issue with that. Although my last stout made with WL Dry English Ale yeast kept carbing up at in my 62F basement. Learned that lesson the hard way.

Just my $.02

You have an infection, pure and simple. There's only three things that can cause gushing, using too much priming sugar, bottling too soon (which you have ruled out by to me leaving the beer alone for a month) and an infection.

But if your beers are fully carbed and leveled out for a few weeks, AND THEN start to gush, it's a late onset infection....Sorry

I'm not too keen on your bottling sanitization regimen. I've never been one who thinks a dishwasher is such a sanitary place to begin with, nor using LD carlson sanitizer any way, especially in the way you're using it, which sounds like your running a wash cycle on your dishwasher and not a sterilizing cycle.

First get rid of the pseudo sanitizer and get a real no rinse like starsan or iodophor, and use them EXACTLY as it is recommended, DON'T RINSE IT, DON'T LET IT DRY. Rinse/wash your bottles by had, using either a jet bottle washer and/or a bottle brush. Sanitize them by either dunking them in the sanitizer or using a vinator. Make sure you've sanitized your caps.

Bottle as normal and see if it works. You can't have a shotgun effect and be able to figure out what's going on. You can only change one variable at a time and it seems your weekest, oddest variable is how you treat the bottles. So my advice is to try it a different, more traditional way and see if it works better for you.

But most all the other theories folks are offering are off base....there's only 3 reasons for gushers as I stated above.

I am spot on with you Revvy. I listened to an episode of can you brew it from the brewing network and they described what I am seeing to a t. I am going to change out my bottling regimen and quit with the dishwasher. I got some PBW on the way with a new drill mountable bottle brush and I am going to give everything a good scrub. Next batch I do I am going to scrub again and do a long starsan soak and take the bottles directly out of the starsan and immediately fill them with beer.

I'm also with Revvy on the dishwasher, it's not a sanitary environment. Do you know how much waste water remains in the system between cycles and just sits there? It's astonishing. And that soup gets mixed in with the next cycle, your beer bottles.

Also I don't believe enough water gets inside those narrow necks to clean anything out. Hit and miss most likely.

I'd bottle brush first, followed by a jet clean, then sanitize.

I soak (dirty) bottles with old fashioned washing soda (Sodium Carbonate), bottle-brush them well, rinse them out a few times, and hit them with the jet using very hot water. Then into the Starsan.