Cocoa Nibs Cause Gushers?

[heckels]

Hi all,

After 50+ batches I've finally encountered my first set of gushers. They're a porter that has an addition of habenero pepper in the boil and cocoa nibs in the secondary.

I had kegged this batch first, then part way through the keg bottled a 12-pack to save and enter into competitions. After about 7 months I finally cracked one open and it was a gusher. I tried 5 others with the same result.

I've never had a problem with sanitation in the past- I'm pretty friggin anal about that stuff. Is there a possibility that the cocoa nibs I added could have been contaminated, or maybe the habenero is having ill effects in the bottle?

I tasted some of the little bit that was left in the bottle and it tasted just fine. No off or sour favors an the carbonation didn't seem too out of whack.

Thoughts?

 

[day_trippr]

I make an imperial triple chocolate honey stout which gets a half pound of nibs in secondary, and I've never had an infected batch.

That said, except for the first few batches of that recipe where I just dumped the dry nibs straight into the carboy, a couple of years ago I switched to soaking the nibs for two to three days in a sealed container with enough unflavored vodka to cover, before dumping the whole thing into the carboy with the young brew. It definitely intensified the chocolate flavor, but I suppose it would kill any critters that might be lurking in the nibs as well.

But, either way, I haven't read any posts on the forums fingering nibs as an infection vector.

Obviously a gusher is extraordinarily carbed, and when a gusher happens, the nucleation sites provided by the CO2 breaking out of solution will have a cascade effect, removing a lot of the carbonation out of what little bit remains. Hence, the remains you sampled wouldn't be representative of what was in the bottle before you removed the cap.

I'm left wondering if that batch just wasn't finished fermenting before you bottled it...

Cheers!

 

[heckels]

I suppose there's a chance it hadn't finished even though I take a reading when transferring to the secondary and another reading a month later.

Next time I will try soaking in vodka first as a precautionary measure.

Thanks!

 

[kellzey]

how much sugar did you add?

 

[heckels]

No sugar. It was force carbed in the keg then a dozen bottled.

 

[heckels]

Alright, well, I'm starting to lean more towards the possibility that fermentation was not complete.

I just had the same issue with a vanilla porter. I'm sure it was done fermenting as i got the same reading a month apart before bottling but I used those damned tablets to carb a small batch. I used 4 as per the package and ended up with bombs. Again, the gases beer tastes fine but overcarbed.

My point is that the results were the same...explosion from the bottle but no off favors in what beer remained in the bottle.

 

[01steve]

i'm quite the noob but maybe someone of more expertise can reslove this.

i too have made a chilli beer w/ cacao nibs and i used red chilli peppers-... the other half of the same chocolate stout recipe went in another fermenter w/ cherry puree. i've noticed the chilli style has a tendancy to gush (girlfriend yelled at me to clean beer off of the ceiling). the choco cherry stout cabonated just fine.

i'm very fond of billy's chillies and i've noticed those have a tendency to gush aswell.

i don't believe it's in the sanitization-... i believe it has more to do w/ the peppers themselves.