What happened to my brew?

So I brewed this 5 Gallon IPA on the 2nd of July. I had full fermentation the next day. Everything went well, temps were kept exact with my new restaraunt thermometers. Wyeast California Ale Liquid Yeast was used.

On the 13th (2 weeks later) I racked to my secondary just for the hell of it, I had never done it before and wanted the practice.

Another 8 days passed and I bottled on July 21st using 1 Cup of honey like the recipe called for. I added a bit of water and heated the honey to 100f so it would mix well with the beer, it did, there was no honey left after bottling.

Well it is now the 8th of August, I put a couple of my 12oz bottles in the fridge a couple days ago. I just cracked this one open and this was the after result! It was carbed well and immediately just foamed over for aout 5 minutes, the video is about 10 minutes after opening the beer and letting it foam over into the sink.

[ame]http://youtu.be/UowryNRUU40[/ame]

It has now been about 25 minutes and the beer looks normal, normal amount of bubbles anyway. The head looks a little off and it taste just awful.

Do I simply need to let it sit for a few more weeks and finish carbing and finishing or did I screw up somewhere?

over carbed......1 cup of honey is way too much ...measure honey by the ounce for priming 3oz is what I've had success with

Also what was your final gravity when bottling...you may have had too much sugar already if racking to secondary at 2 weeks....no way to know with out taking a reading

just be glad you didn't have bottle bombs...looks like a good color and clarity

I can't see the video but from your description I would guess one of two things...
First the beer had not fully fermented, when you bottled the sugar in the honey, combined with the remaining sugar in the beer ended up overcarbing the beer..producing the gusher you describe...been there it sucks...
Second, and is that somehow you had an infection...I've heard that infection can cause gushers, but have not had that happen to my beers yet. This could also explain why you think the beer tastes terrible...although it could be the beer just has not aged enough in the bottle.

I'm with Schumed on this one... one cup of honey seems like *way* too much.

A basic calculator I found online puts 1 cup of honey at approx. 12oz. Typically you want to measure by weight and not volume, so that's a "give or take" calculation... but from what I gathered, you pretty much had around double the priming sugar that you probably needed/wanted.

I'm a bit curious where you found that recipe.

holy motherload of honey

My OG was 1.050. The FG was around 1.010 but I only checked it once. Should have given it a few extra days and checked it multiple times. It's just hard to do with my equipment. (turkey baster)

Well seems like the general consensus is way to much honey. I highly doubt infection, I am very thorough and methodical with my brewing and take a long time to clean and sanitize during, throughout and after my process. In fact I think I'm going to cut back, I waste alot of time I feel like with the cleaning and sanitizing

I got the recipe from the Brooklyn Brewshops Beer Making Book : Small Recipe Edition.

Exactly how it is written in the book:

Every-Day IPA
5 Gallon Batch

3.25 Gallons Water
5 Gallons Sparge Water
9lbs American 2-Row
2lbs Caramel 20
1lb Victory
0.5lb Munich

0.5OZ Columbus
2.5OZ Cascade divided into 1/5ths

Wyeast Amercian Ale II or Safale S-05
(I used White Labs California Ale now that I think about it)

1 Cup of Honey for bottling

Bottling Instruction:
Add 1 cup of honey and 1/2 cup water to saucepan, heat until soluble (100F) Continue adding water 1/2 cup at a time if the honey does not dissolve completely. Add to bottling bucket, transfer beer to bottling bucket, bottle and cap. Wait 2-4 weeks. DRINK!

I opened another one, same result, tried to drink it. Awful! Taste nothing like an IPA, a regular pale ale at best. I also noticed some small hints of honey so the carbing is not complete. I'm worried if they keep carbing the bottles are going to explode.

Oh and next time I am going to skip the secondary, too much work for too little benefit in my opinion. Single stage fermentation has always worked for me.

I only bottled 3 12oz bottles. I usually only use 22oz'ers but I wanted to sample some smaller bottles while the others finished aging. Could this cause a problem? I remember reading somewhere that the 22oz bottles tend to carb faster then the 12oz

i think brooklyn brewshop was drinking to much every-day ipa when they made those instructions

Contained wring information and I don't want to confuse people more. So I deleted this posting.

I should have just stuck with dextrose from the local brew shop.

I'm not sure what you guys are paying per recipe but it is getting very expensive for me to make a mistake.

In fact I am going to start brewing in 1 gallon batches. I just got a truck full of used 1 gallon and 1/2 gallon growlers.

If I did get an infection this recipe is a perfectly good waste of $52 big ones

On another point, I was very leary of using the honey so I started searching and dumb old me found an article where they said heating honey over 100% would damage the sugars necessary for carbonation and could damage the yeast when its mixed. They recommended only heating it to 100F

funnycreature said:

Looks like you might have gotten an infection. I recently added some honey to my pumpkin ale at day 2 of fermentation but I heated it to ~160F for about 5 min. 100F is almost the perfect temperature for bacteria to grow so maybe that's where you made a mistake. I am not sure that overcarbonation, as suggested by others, will result in an awful taste but I can't say for sure it didn't happen. In Beersmith honey is shown as 75% fermentable so 1 cup of honey would translate into 3/4 of a cup of corn sugar which is about right. Just my opinions though!

Click to expand...

1 cup of honey is NOT about equal to 3/4 cup corn sugar. honey is more dense! 3/4 cup corn sugar weighs about 4 ounces. 3/4 honey weighs TWICE that.

i really don't think it is infected. just wayyyyyyyyyyy over carbed.

OP could try uncapping and recapping to release a bunch of the gas. that could be a big mess though.

I think you would want to take bottle bomb precautions. This could get ugly fast. Uncap/recap, maybe store in a plastic tub with lid. Regarding taste is it also possible that, in addition to too much honey, heating the honey up too high messed with the flavor? Sorry about your beer - it does suck to feel like you're throwing $$ away.

According to my math, 1 cup of honey is equal to around 9.22 to 10.6 oz of corn sugar and would give you about 4.3 volumes of CO2, assuming you fermented around 68F. You are probably very close to bottle bombs. I can't remember the limit for beer bottles (I think its [see edit]) but I think you are close to it or a little over.

So, that is a lot of carbonation. The highest I've gone is on a Weissbier (they're supposed to be highly carbed) and I used 6 oz of corn sugar (dextrose). It came out perfectly for the style, but what you used in that IPA was definitely way too much.

Carbonation in excess will give the beer an acidic/bitter (not hop bitter) taste. Its hard to explain, but it kind of reminds me of tonic water.

If that's what you're tasting, pour one out and let the carbonation blow off for a while and let the beer warm up a bit. Try it then and see if it tastes any better.

I think you're definitely over carbonated for sure.

[EDIT] The limit for 12oz beer bottles appears to be more like 3 volumes, so you are definitely in the danger zone once the yeast makes it through all that honey.

I fermented at exactly 68 degrees in my fermentation chamber.

I thought following the instructions was what your suppose to do!

I probably will not use honey again, it adds too much headache to the process when dextrose is pre packed.

Also, 1 gallons batches will allow me to ferment 4-6 different types of beer in my fermentation chamber. Once I find something that suits me I'll bump it up to 5 gallons!

I brewed a couple of the recipes out of that book a couple of years back and found that almost every one was way over carbed. None as bad as you experienced but all much higher than I expected. Almost all the recipes call for similar amounts of syrup, honey or some other household sugar.
It is not bad to use any as a priming sugar, but none of them are the exact same and not all honeys are the same. Due to those differences, it can be hard to get an accurate reading on the exact amount needed vs some priming sugars made specifically for brewing.
I would look to some of the online tools to figure out the priming needs for the specific style you are brewing.
Also, there is a post here somewhere on how to remove excess carbonation from bottles that can help with these already in the bottle.

progmac said:

1 cup of honey is NOT about equal to 3/4 cup corn sugar. honey is more dense! 3/4 cup corn sugar weighs about 4 ounces. 3/4 honey weighs TWICE that.

i really don't think it is infected. just wayyyyyyyyyyy over carbed.

OP could try uncapping and recapping to release a bunch of the gas. that could be a big mess though.

Click to expand...

Good point! I was going purely by volume, my mistake! This is another reason why all these things should be weighed, not measured by volume!

Something else I think I may have confused everyone about in my original post and its my mistake.

When I crack a cap, yes it makes a loud hiss like its heavily carbonated but it does not start foaming over. I watched a video of that, I have a different problem.

As soon as I try to pour it is when it foam. 1 oz of beer in my glass equals half a gallon of foam it seems like.

Once the beer warms up I can pour it without it foaming but thats no fun.

To the above poster, I opened one and I am letting it warm up. I will try it a little later once the carbonation looks normal.

funnycreature said:

Looks like you might have gotten an infection. I recently added some honey to my pumpkin ale at day 2 of fermentation but I heated it to ~160F for about 5 min. 100F is almost the perfect temperature for bacteria to grow so maybe that's where you made a mistake. I am not sure that overcarbonation, as suggested by others, will result in an awful taste but I can't say for sure it didn't happen. In Beersmith honey is shown as 75% fermentable so 1 cup of honey would translate into 3/4 of a cup of corn sugar which is about right. Just my opinions though!

Click to expand...

Sure, 100 *F is a great temperature for micro-organism. However, honey is a horrible substrate. Have you ever seen moldy honey? Or moldy soda? Little buggers can't take hold when the sugar concentrations are that high.

To the OP, are you saying that even after you've degassed it in a glass to a proper level of carbonation it still tastes bad? Certainly you will lose a lot of whatever hop aroma and flavor you had in there with the degassing, and with high carbonation comes a carbonic acid bite, but my experiences with over-carbing have still given a decent-tasting beer when it's done gassing off.

Maybe the cooked honey had something to do with the off flavors, or maybe it still a bit green. Go for 1-gallon batches if you want, it's a great way to brew a huge variety of beer without the 5-gallon commitment. But I wouldn't run away from 5 gallons just based on this incident. Maybe just vet your recipes or process instructions a bit more. That's what this forum is for!

the head also lacks any texture or richness.

it seems just like, dawn dish soap foam I guess.

I will continue brewing 5 gallons for sure. For now though the cost and space constraints dictate one gallon batches. Flight school is expensive and time consuming

Good news everyone! I just tried the third bottle and after degassing it for a bit it doesn't taste half bad. Not half good but not half bad either. I have definitely lost alot of the hoppy flavors and aroma's but it doesnt have a sourish off flavor either.! Maybe all hope is not lost! Or maybe its my 3rd beer and I'm starting to care about the taste, either way its a homebrew! :rockin:

2bluewagons said:

Sure, 100 *F is a great temperature for micro-organism. However, honey is a horrible substrate. Have you ever seen moldy honey? Or moldy soda? Little buggers can't take hold when the sugar concentrations are that high.

Click to expand...

No, I haven't I feel like a tool now haha! Not sure if spores can be found in honey though that might like to be in wort later but that's grasping for a straw Wish I could delete my misinformative post before others read it but that would be cheating!

I say we all get a bulk discount and all order kegging kits!

funnycreature said:

In Beersmith honey is shown as 75% fermentable so 1 cup of honey would translate into 3/4 of a cup of corn sugar which is about right. Just my opinions though!

Click to expand...

1.) Honey is 75% fermentation yields but corn sugar is 90%
2.) This refers to weight; not volume.

1 cup of honey weighs 12 oz.
1 cup of corn sugar weighs 7 oz.

1 cup of honey = 12 oz. weight.
12 oz. honey => 9 oz fermentables => 10 oz. of corn sugar
10 oz. corn sugar = 1 3/7 cups corn sugar.

Twice as much as is needed.

funnycreature said:

In Beersmith honey is shown as 75% fermentable so 1 cup of honey would translate into 3/4 of a cup of corn sugar which is about right. Just my opinions though!

Click to expand...

That's a weird thing- as in my experience as a meadmaker and winemaker, honey is 100% fermentable. Beersmith has it wrong. Honey is all sugar.

Yooper said:

That's a weird thing- as in my experience as a meadmaker and winemaker, honey is 100% fermentable. Beersmith has it wrong. Honey is all sugar.

Click to expand...

I *think* the wording is ambiguous and misleading. I *think* it refers to fermentation yields. (See this page.)

"A pound of honey yields 75% as much as a pound of sugar" and "Both honey and sugar are 100% fermentable" seem like mutually consistent statements to me. (one tells what the materials yield; the other what percentage of the material is sugar.) But I don't know enough to state what either means technically.

===edit ===

Okay, I don't have the slightest idea what "percent fermentable" means nor do I know what honey is chemically and I'm not 100% sure what "75% Yield" means but.

1 lb of sugar in 1 gallon yields a gravity of 1.046 and is said to have a "yield" of 100%
1 lb of corn sugar in 1 gallon yields a gravity of 1.042 and is said to have a "yield" of 90%
1 lb of honey in 1 gallon yields a gravity of 1.035 and is said to have a "yield" of 75% (this is from the page cited above; of course, different honeys will vary.)


And, of course 42 is 90% of 46 and 35 is 75% of 46 so "yield" can be taken as "percentage of gravity points compared to equal weights of sugar" but I don't know what it technically means.


=== more edit ====
What's confusing me is that fermentable sugar should all have the same chemical composition and weigh the same, shouldn't it? If honey is "all sugars" then a lb of honey (or of corn sugar) should have the same gravity as a lb of sucrose, wouldn't it? Unless it's a different fermentable sugar that weighs a different amount. But that's meaningless, isn't it? If it weighs a different amount it has a different chemical composition and is no longer fermentable, right? And if a fermentable sugar can weigh a different amount than a hydrometer would be useless, wouldn't it?

woozy said:

1.) Honey is 75% fermentation yields but corn sugar is 90%
2.) This refers to weight; not volume.

1 cup of honey weighs 12 oz.
1 cup of corn sugar weighs 7 oz.

1 cup of honey = 12 oz. weight.
12 oz. honey => 9 oz fermentables => 10 oz. of corn sugar
10 oz. corn sugar = 1 3/7 cups corn sugar.

Twice as much as is needed.

Click to expand...

Yeah that was already stated above

Yooper said:

That's a weird thing- as in my experience as a meadmaker and winemaker, honey is 100% fermentable. Beersmith has it wrong. Honey is all sugar.

Click to expand...

well, that' s interesting

progmac said:

Yooper said:

That's a weird thing- as in my experience as a meadmaker and winemaker, honey is 100% fermentable. Beersmith has it wrong. Honey is all sugar.

Click to expand...

well, that' s interesting

Click to expand...

I'd still like someone to explain what something "is N% fermentable" and "has an N% yield" means.

I'm still thinking that honey is "100% fermentable" (it is made entirely of fermentable sugars and nothing else) and "has a 75% yield" (a lb of sugar will ferment into into an amount of alchohol 75% that of a pound of sucrose) but for the life of me I can't work out how that would work.

Well I have concluded that the batch is ruined. I degassed and recapped all the bottles, let them sit for a week and they are WAY worse then before. This must be an infection. I had some bottle bombs before I recapped and now I have some more bottle bombs after recapping. I am going to dispose of the batch and start fresh.

Another interesting thing though. My last brew, Appalachian Pale Ale (Partial) had an off flavor in it but it was drinkable. This new beer taste awful so I won't drink it, but I did notice some of the same off flavors in this IPA as my last Pale Ale. Could this be my water? I'm on well water on the peak of a mountain.

The only consistant variable between the two was water and the same strand of yeast. Not sure why I would have the same flavors in both

mendlerr said:

Well I have concluded that the batch is ruined. I degassed and recapped all the bottles, let them sit for a week and they are WAY worse then before. This must be an infection. I had some bottle bombs before I recapped and now I have some more bottle bombs after recapping. I am going to dispose of the batch and start fresh.

Another interesting thing though. My last brew, Appalachian Pale Ale (Partial) had an off flavor in it but it was drinkable. This new beer taste awful so I won't drink it, but I did notice some of the same off flavors in this IPA as my last Pale Ale. Could this be my water? I'm on well water on the peak of a mountain.

The only consistant variable between the two was water and the same strand of yeast. Not sure why I would have the same flavors in both

Click to expand...

I'd recommend ironing out the basics before concerning yourself with water.

Steps for making good beer:
1. Let your wort cool to 60-65 degrees before pitching yeast
2. Always rehydrate dry yeast, almost always make a starter with liquid yeast
3. Aerate well
4. Maintain fermentation temperature around 60-65 degrees for ales.
5. Sanitize with great care

I'd pitch the batch in question and start reading a lot and really think about how to make the best beer that you can.

I do all that though. I built wort chillers, a fermentation chamber. I maintain temperatures and I definitely sanitize everything as well as I can (probably too much).

The only thing I did not do it make a starter for the liquid yeast, but I had some pretty serious fermentation within 24 hours.

This next batch will be a 2 gallon one. Simply because I got my hands on a few 1 gallon fermentors from a friend. Should make it easier with my space constraints too

You said earlier back that your ferm chamber was at 68F was that air temp or wort temp and if wort temp how was it measured. Fermentation can increase the inside temp of wort by 5-10F. Just a thought.

oh, sorry. this was the situation with the jacked instructions. if you feel like other issues could be because of the water, get your water report. you may have to send it off for testing if you aren't connected to a municipal supply.

I just feel like the same off flavors in 2 different styles of beer must be from a common variable. the water. not much else was used in both recipes.

its probably going to take me awhile to get a water test. my house is in the middle of nowhere. we are 50 minutes away from any municipality of any kind

definitely infection now! May have already said that earlier but I kept a couple just to see how they progress over time, its been a few more weeks since then. The carbonation has calmed down, ALOT! which is good. I can actually pour a beer and it looks like a beer!

now the beer smells like a green beer with hints of my girlfriends nail polish remover. definitely not drinkable!