First Infection - Took Root After 2 Months in the Bottle

I bottled an American Wheat on 3/16 and when I went into my beer closet to grab some brews to take to a friend I noticed the caps were bulging. I freaked out a bit because I can't imagine how much pressure it took to bulge the caps like that. I knew what had to be done.

I closed the box up and took it to the kitchen. Using an oven mit and sunglasses I proceeded to open the 12 bottles in the sink. They gushed like Old Faithful. I didn't have the stomach to taste it, but it smelled heavily of apple. It's a shame because the beer was pretty tasty before the infection took off and there weren't any signs of infection prior to today. I just gave a buddy a few two weeks ago.

Oh well, I guess I need to brew again!

Sounds like you simply overcarbed (or maybe bottled early?) to me. Always taste it to see if it's infected! If you put them in the fridge for a little while, they would have absorbed a bunch of the CO2 and not gushed as much.

Gremlyn1 said:

Sounds like you simply overcarbed (or maybe bottled early?) to me. Always taste it to see if it's infected! If you put them in the fridge for a little while, they would have absorbed a bunch of the CO2 and not gushed as much.

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The beer carbed up just fine and tasted amazing. These were the last 12 of the batch. I would be surprised if I overcarbed. The batch did get the infamous 1.020 disease so there's a small possibility fermentation started again, but I doubt it.

Wild yeasts take a long time to do their thing. At 1.020 there were plenty of dextrins in there which Brett can eat, and Saccro cannot. I'd at least taste them... nothing in there that would hurt you.

wonderbread23 said:

Wild yeasts take a long time to do their thing. At 1.020 there were plenty of dextrins in there which Brett can eat, and Saccro cannot. I'd at least taste them... nothing in there that would hurt you.

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They have already started their journey through the sewer system. I had a nasty stomach flu earlier in the week so the thought of tasting an infected beer made my stomach turn.

Something similar happened to me last year. Pretty frustrating to be drinking a good brew for a month or 2, only to have it go out of control...

The batch did get the infamous 1.020 disease so there's a small possibility fermentation started again, but I doubt it.

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What's that mean?

It means that the fermentation got "stuck" at 1.020 specific gravity. Water measured with a hydrometer should read 1.000. Beers usually start out at (original gravity) 1.040-1.070 specific gravity, and a brewer usually hopes to get somewhere in the area of 1.010-1.015 finishing (or final) specific gravity. Generally, the higher the starting specific gravity, the more sugar is there for the yeast to eat and turn into alcohol, and the lower the ending specific gravity, the more sugar the yeast have eaten, meaning more alcohol is in the finished beer. Another way of expressing it is that the beer actually weighs less as time goes on, because the alcohol the yeast makes is lighter than the beer was when it started fermenting.

A "stuck" fermentation means that the yeast have stopped converting sugars to alcohol before the brewer thinks that they should have.

Just means you didnt drink your beer fast enough. Two months and there were still 12 bottles left? Shame on you!

...you've had a good brew sit around for a month or two?!

I see,so it has nothing necessarily to do with the specific gravity of 1.020, just the fact that it stayed on it's OG through the entire fermentation process?

And why is it called an infection?

Dodgertown said:

I see,so it has nothing necessarily to do with the specific gravity of 1.020, just the fact that it stayed on it's OG through the entire fermentation process?

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If the gravity never changed you would have sugar water as the yeast did nothing. In this case the OG was not posted but the OP stated that the ferm stopped at 1.020. The 1.020 is very common for extract brewers to happen to.

Dodgertown said:

And why is it called an infection?

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Because "Some unknown fungus, bacteria, yeast or contaminant in my beer" is just to long.

LOL, thanks.

The only excuse for keeping the beer around so long is that I had two different batches bottled and I was drinking a ton of commercial beer so I could build my supply of bottles. I didn't think it would be an issue, but I don't think I will keep my brew around that long unless I'm purposefully aging it. I have a Stone IPA clone that just carb'd up and it's fantastic... it definitely won't be around for two months. Maybe not two weeks!