bottle over carbonated... any ideas?

[jigidyjim]

Hello,

my porter is over carbonated. It slowly gushes out of the bottle after I open it, and when I pour it in a glass it has a huge head and tons of tiny bubbles. It was bottled 8/21. This did not happen with the first few bottles I opened, but every bottle in the last few weeks has done this.

It had an OG of 1.052, a FG of 1.014, used WLP002 yeast. I used 3.5 oz of corn sugar during bottling.

It fermented fairly warm due to the weather (72-75) and there were definitely some heat waves after the bottling was done.

Any advice?

 

[cvstrat]

Don't open towards your face.

Really though I think the best thing you can do is make sure you chill the beer a good while before you plan on drinking it and try to get it cold and avoid pouring into a warm glass.

 

[Grizzlybrew]

I understand the gushing is a problem. But, if you could contain it, has anyone ever just popped the tops off long enough to recap? The CO2 blanket may be slightly disturbed, but not enough to ruin the beer. Aside from possible contamination, would there be any adverse effects on the beer? Using oxygen absorbing caps would absorb any oxygen in the beer and allow some additional CO2 to seep out solution, lessening the carbonation level.

Am I way off?.. or just completely missing something?

 

[jigidyjim]

In my case, I'd have to recap right away... It takes about a second until the beer starts slowly bubbling out. It's not explosive... Just very slowly bubbles over with no sign of stopping.

 

[knappster]

Maybe a silly question, but how were the bottles stored? I had some Sam Adams bottles that gushed when I stored them laying down in the fridge.

 

[BrewToppers]

I'm sure this is a controversial subject — Oxycaps. From what I understand and hearing from the head of the BJCP, Oxycaps are worthless as far as their ability to absorb excess oxygen in the head-space. I believe the residual yeast suspended in the beer can absorb and convert oxygen left in the headspace faster than a cap can absorb it.

Can anyone verify this?

I think the getting it as cold as possible is the best solution. Gas diffuses into a liquid at colder temps.

Hope it turned out ok!

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

If some bottles do this but others don't, some of the bottles may not have been sanitized well enough.

 

[BrewToppers]

If the bottles weren't clean enough, are you talking about nucleation sites where all of the CO2 in the beer would come out all at once? This makes sense to me. Think Mentos and Diet Coke!

If some bottles do this but others don't, some of the bottles may not have been sanitized well enough.

 

[jigidyjim]

In my case, all the bottles are doing this now, so it doesn't seem to be a sanitization issue (unless all bottles were dirty!).

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

If the bottles weren't clean enough, are you talking about nucleation sites where all of the CO2 in the beer would come out all at once? This makes sense to me. Think Mentos and Diet Coke!

I'm not talking about not clean, I'm talking about not sanitized. Infections can ferment sugars that the yeast can't creating the overcarbonation. I'm not saying this is what the OP has, just that it is possible.

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

In my case, all the bottles are doing this now, so it doesn't seem to be a sanitization issue (unless all bottles were dirty!).

Or the bottling bucket, racking hose, bottling wand, etc...

 

[craven_morhead]

Is there any way to tell the difference between gushers from plain over-carbing (too much priming sugar, sugars from the beer not fermented out when bottling starts) and an infection? Not to thread-jack, but for some reason only my IPAs have been overcarbed.

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

If it only your IPAs, I'd suspect that they aren't fully femented out when you bottle. Are you using a hydrometer?

 

[Revvy]

If the majority of the bottles were fine after the 3-4 weeks it takes for a bottle to normally carb, but a few weeks later when you get to the last few bottles, and THEY gush, then you have a late onset infection. If the majority of the bottles were carbed fine initially, then something develped in the bottle.

That is of course if you batch primed everything, putting the priming solution in your bucket and mixing it with the beer. If you individually bottle primed it will really impossible to tell since it is nearly impossible to get accurate and consistant measurements of each bottle's worth of sugar down to the grain across the batch.

If you batch prime, you can't have some bottles over primed while others were fine. THe sugar solution does a really good job of automatically mixing itself when racking and mixing in the bottling bucket.

 

[craven_morhead]

Yep, using a hydrometer, though I'm not sure about my readings since I had some hop solids in the mix when I was bottling. Could that be the source of the over-carbing, the additional solids in the beer cutting down on the beer's ability to re-absorb CO2? The bottles I had that were gushers were always those with the most crud in them, maybe 1/2 cm of yeast/hops sludge at the bottoms. All batches were batch-primed.

My numbers:

IPA #1
OG 1.070-ish, unsure due to big cold break and hops
FG 1.025
Fermented 42 days

IPA #2
OG 1.064
FG 1.017
Fermented 22 days

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

I dunno. I get a lot of co2 release in my beers that I dry hop in secondary. I supose the hop debris could cause the same thing in the bottles.

I'd try to avoid the debris by being whirlpooling the wort before raking into primary, use a secondary and dry hop in muslin bags, and carefully racking into the bottling bucket.

 

[craven_morhead]

In the past couple of days I've opened up a couple of others from the same batch, and they haven't been over-carbed, but also haven't had a lot of hops residue. I think that may be the answer.

 

[david_42]

Hop debris provides nucleation sites for accelerating CO2 release. It doesn't mean over-carbonation, but you'll see severe foaming.

 

[craven_morhead]

Ah HA! That makes sense. Sort of like the mentos-in-coke trick.

 

[homebrewer_99]

Once your brew has reached a carbonation level that you like it's time to place all the brew in the fridge to retard any further fermentation.

 

[craven_morhead]

I don't quite have that kind of fridge space. In the meantime, I've opened up more of the IPA bottles; the only ones that have been foamy have been those w/ hop sludge in them. I'm going to switch to leaf hops instead of pellets for dry-hopping from now on.