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Beer Foams While Bottling - Is It Flat?

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whovous

Waterloo Sunset
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Yesterday was my first try with the Last Straw beer gun. The beer was very cold and the bottles were ice cold, but it all foamed like crazy. I wound up having to top the bottles off with beer poured from a glass.

I was up against a deadline to bottle for a competition. What is the likelihood I've just entered some very flat beer in this competition?
 
Did bottle any extra? If not, I would bottle one or two with your beer gun just like you did for the comp, let it sit for a while, and then pop the top. That should give you a pretty good idea of what the judges will get.
 
How cold is cold? Although I'm still very new to this, I'm wondering why youre not bottling at room temperature. I would think that bottling at anything less (especially a substantially less temp)could result in bursting /bottle bombs while bottle carbing should the temperature actually reach usual room temp (70*F). How soon is your competition ? Did you bottle up enough to maybe do a pre-comp check of a few of your bottles a day or so in advance to make sure theyre ready before you transport the lot and find out the hard way ,that your suspicion is correct.
 
I should have been more clear. I was bottling from a keg at 35F. The bottles were straight from the freezer. The beer was decently carbed and poured well into a glass from my Pluto gun.

I did not connect the CO2 to the Last Straw. Does that matter?

The beers are already delivered to the competition
 
My first couple bottles are always fishy then it settles down. Until the lines get cold it will foam. I also chill my bottles but when bottling a case or so I can't chill them all so I sanitize in cool water and star san. I do drop the serving pressure to around 6-8 psi. After the first couple bottles I have almost no foam and perfectly full bottles.

Fwiw I tried capping a couple of bottles that were half foam... Those half full bottles rested in the fridge for a couple weeks and I opened them... They were just fine regarding carbonation... Was an interesting experiment.
 
Yeah, I expected the fizz at the start and drew a full glass of beer before going to the bottles, as I saw in a video review. The foaming never stopped and I wasted a LOT of beer trying. I wound up pouring from the glass and topping off the bottles. I have two extra bottles to take to a friend this weekend, so I guess I will learn then if they are flat. Judging is Friday as well, so we may all learn at the same time.

I wish I understood why it foamed this way but did not foa, when I used the regular tap to pour to a glass.
 

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