white ring in bottles

hi im brewing a pilsner lager from a kit, its been in primary for 3 weeks ive bottled sunday and i gave them a quick check this morning and noticed a small white ring forming around the top of the bottle neck, to be honest it looks like v small bubbles, ive never had an effection so im a bit nervous, this time i did use coopers carb drops if this makes any difference. thanks

That looks fine to me. It looks like a carbonation ring from the yeast working on carbing your brew.

The "tell-tale ring" that occurs inside bottles from infection is more of a film that lines the bottle and/or top of the beer. Your bottles don't exhibit anything like that (from what I can see.)

How did it taste/smell at bottling?

Looks like gas bubbles. Your beer may gas off due to temp differential from bottling til now. Or just being disturbed.

If you end up with a permanent ring around the inside after a while, then you might want to start worrying. But even then, you might still have drinkable beer if you drink it soon enough.

its tasted fine and smelt good, all my other brews never show signs of carbing..... its only been two days..lol

Yeah, I've had rings form from bottle carbing and it's not a problem, the beer is fine. There is a ring that can form due to infection, but be wary of that. There are people out there, including on this forum, who will immediately tell you the ring in your bottle means you have an infection. That's not necessarily the case. You MAY have an infection, but, most likely, it's not an issue.

cookie1980 said:

its tasted fine and smelt good, all my other brews never show signs of carbing..... its only been two days..lol

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Then I bet it's fine. Of course, only time will tell, but at this point you have absolutely nothing to be concerned about.

Report back in 3 weeks and let us know how it turns out!

ok ty for replys ill let u know when i try..

If it's infected you'll eventually taste it.

Shooter said:

If it's infected you'll eventually taste it.

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how do u mean

cookie1980 said:

how do u mean

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Well, it probably won't taste like beer that's for sure!

Paint thinner or maybe old sweaty socks!!

...or you won't taste it because it will be a gusher and every bottle will shoot the entire contents out of the bottle in a glorious volcano of foam.

Even when you get the dreaded white ring, sometimes it just means you got a tiny krausen from fermenting the priming sugar and there's no fermentation.

I have brett beers with the ring and beers fermented with saccharomyces with the ring. I have one infected batch with the rings. One brett batch has a very thick ring. Good thing I put those in heavy belgian bottles.

I also have wild ales, brett beers and beers I know to be infected with lacto and none of them have the telltale ring.


What you have are just carbonation bubbles. Do not be afraid.