sweet wheat beer and foaming bottles

Hello, im new here and to brewing and i had a couple question maybe someone could answer. i just started brewing about 3 months ago( im still pretty bad at it LOL) and mostly i get a little too excited and impatient and i know that i cant be with home brewing. my first question is; i brewed some wheat beer and waited a week and then bottled it, i know that i should of waited longer to bottle it (like i said im trying to be more patient) and then waited another week and then tried a few of them. they were quite sweet tasting and not very good so i wanted to know if with wheat beer it tastes sweet normally cause it is not ready or if i did something wrong in the process(besides being impatient) question #2; with that same batch of beer i had tried 3 of them and when i opened the first 2, everything went fine and then when i opened the 3rd it starting foaming like crazy and wouldn't stop so i was wondering if you could tell me the cause of it? thanks alot =)
Happymunky

Sounds like you bottled before fermentation was complete. Now the yeast in the bottles are eating the sugars in a pressurized enviroment, giving you too much carbonation.

Can you give us the original recipe? Which yeast?

#1 - Sounds like they weren't done fermenting. You need to take hydrometer readings to ensure that your primary fermentation is complete.
#2 - See: #1. Since the beer wasn't finished fermenting you have a lot of CO2 building up in those bottles. Also, if you didn't boil the priming sugar you can get very spotty/inconsistent carbonation.

Tell us the full process. Did you take any hydro readings? Did you rack the wort on top of powdered priming sugar to bottle?

theredben said:

Sounds like you bottled before fermentation was complete. Now the yeast in the bottles are eating the sugars in a pressurized enviroment, giving you too much carbonation.

Can you give us the original recipe? Which yeast?

Click to expand...

it was just a Mr. Beer coastal wheat and the yeast was under the lid

FensterBos said:

#1 - Sounds like they weren't done fermenting. You need to take hydrometer readings to ensure that your primary fermentation is complete.
#2 - See: #1. Since the beer wasn't finished fermenting you have a lot of CO2 building up in those bottles. Also, if you didn't boil the priming sugar you can get very spotty/inconsistent carbonation.

Tell us the full process. Did you take any hydro readings? Did you rack the wort on top of powdered priming sugar to bottle?

Click to expand...

im unfamiliar with " boiling the sugar" could you explain that process a little bit? and i do not have a hydrometer either( like i said im new, and slowly trying to get more equiptment)

happymunky said:

im unfamiliar with " boiling the sugar" could you explain that process a little bit? and i do not have a hydrometer either( like i said im new, and slowly trying to get more equiptment)

Click to expand...

Sorry for the late reply; sometimes I don't check the forum on weekends.

1. When we use bottling conditioning to carbonate our beer we add about 5 ounces of "priming sugar" to the beer before bottling. The yeast that is suspended in the beer will eat this sugar and produce CO2, which is absorbed into the liquid. If you don't boil the priming sugar prior to adding it to the beer the sugar might not distribute well and can provide inconsistent CO2 levels (i.e. one bottle is flat, one bottle is way over carbonated).
2. If you are going to take your brewing from once-in-a-while activity to hobby I recommend buying a hydrometer for your next batch. It will give you accurate readings on if your beer has completed fermentation and other numbers like ABV%. Hydrometers are cheap; worth the $6.00 investment. Most beginner equipment kits will include them.

Hey happymunky I was in the same boat as you when I started with the Mr. Beer kit. It's a good kit to start out with, but what you probably don't know - I didn't, and it sucked - is that the Mr. Beer directions skip and leave out a lot of terms and techniques that veteran brewers use all the time. This was absolutely frustrating. It's like the b*stard way to make beer when compared to what everyone else on HBT is using.

The MB directions say add sugar to your bottles at the bottling stage to add carbonation, while most users here who use much more elaborate kits brewing larger batches boil a few cups of sugar and water, add to a bucket, then pour their fermented beer on top of it, then fill the bottles up from the bucket with the sugar already in the beer.

I had the hardest time starting out with Mr. Beer because the directions were SO simple, but the folks here used so much added equipment and technique their answers went way over my head when I asked questions. So if you feel it happening to you, slow down. There's nothing to gain by going fast and getting frustrated.

Since the Mr. Beer kit mentions nothing about hydrometers, wort chillers, boiling your sugar for bottling, etc. you probably don't know what any of that means or what they do because I didn't (MB directions mention none of that). I gauged the right time to bottle by simply tasting once every seven days. In simple terms, when that sweetness is gone, wait 5 more days and bottle. The kit says do not bottle before 7 days, best results if bottled after 14 days. Typically, I let things ferment in the Mr. Beer fermenter about 21 days. Your problems arose simply because you rushed it a little much.

Take your baby steps for the first few brews, THEN start learning more about hydrometers, wort chillers, boiling your sugar, etc. By that stage you'll be ready to dive in and get bigger and better equipment. For me, it took about 30 gallons of Mr. Beer to get to that stage. It'll be overwhelming if you try to absorb too much from the experts, but once you know more, you'll start to benefit greatly from what they know cuz you'll be operating at "almost" the same page as them. This is the stage I'm at, I've moved on from MB but I think I'm benefitting much more from the good folks here at HBT then I did when I first started with the simple Mr. Beer 2.5 gallon system.

Get THIS BOOK after you've made 5 brews. It'll help. And it'll make a little more since once you've got a few batches under your belt.