foam while bottling

I bottled my second brew this morning, while bottling I was creating a small amount of foam/head in the bottles. No matter what I did it would not go away. I also had an issue with the priming sugar, it did not completely dissolve, or it settled out during bottling. I added the sugar to the priming bucket before transfer and gave it a light stir before bottling, what gives?

The foam itself is no big deal. Possibly sanitizer and beer mixing...

However, you should boil your sugar in a couple cups of water first... That will disolve the sugar fully. I dump the hot sugar water into the bucket and siphon onto it. A few yeasties die, but all for the greater good.

The undisolved sugar probably contributed to the foaming.

Be careful - if you have uneven sugar distribution - you may have just created bottle bombs. These are no fun, trust me.

kvh

The only thing I could think of with the head is that there was a but too much air getting in the beer during the bottling process -- did you use a bucket, a wand, or something else?

And the priming sugar should be dissolved in 2 cups of water before being put into the 5 gallon batch. did you do that?

How long was your beer in primary/secondary? If you bottled directly after primary fermentation stopped it's probable you still had CO2 in the beer. This will off-gas naturally if you use a secondary or an extended time in the primary before bottling.

I second the suggestions about boiling your priming sugar, this will not only ensure even distribution but will also ensure that it is sanitized.

I did not boil or dissolve my primary sugar. I read that adding it to the priming bucket before transfer, with the natural mixing, should be good. Hey, I'm new to this, but now I know better.

Primary for 9 days and secondary for 15 days.

I have heard about "bottle bombs" but have yet to experience, being that this is my second brew and all. If I cold condition the brew will I have a lesser chance of having this happen? And will I have to extend the bottle conditioning time? I was going with the gold standard of 1-2-3.

Will the excess CO2 or foaming cause my beer to taste funny? What could I expect?

Best advice I have for you is to keep the bottles in a tupperware bin so an explosion doesn't make a mess.

Handle the bottles with a rag or other protective thing. Glass shards are no fun.

Don't mean to scare you, but it's sort of a serious issue. Nevertheless, it shouldn't dissuade you from enjoying a good beer. Just be careful when you open them.


IMHO, the ****ty part about your situation isn't the fact that some will be overcarbed, it's that you don't know which ones. I've overcarbed a batch and just kept them cold and kept an eye on them and drank them somewhat quickly without incident. But in your case, you don't know which one will be the one that gets you. That is what I think you should keep in mind.

Bringing back an old thread, but it pertains to my bottling day today. My problem was that I noticed i was getting a bunch of foam in my bottles about a 1/4 inch at the top of my bottles. So i simply filled my bottles until the foam almost foamed over (with a few overfills...), and put my caps on and did not cap for 5 min or so. This allowed for the foam to calm down and when i capped no bottles had more than a slight layer of foam on top of the beer line.

My question is did i oxidize this beer? what can I do to cut back on this foaming or is this harmless? I followed Revvy's bottling thread in its suggestions except that i still use Papazian's method of bottling in the boxes with a longer piece of tubing from my spigot to the bottles. I feel that my bottling wand was letting beer out faster than I would have liked, and was possibly the culprit.

Thanks for the help, Cheers!