Excessive foam/overcarbed?

[jspain3]

I brewed a Zombie Dust clone back in August 2015. I bottle conditioned and tore through the 10 gallon batch pretty fast. No carb problems. Fast forward to 2016; after brewing more batches I realized I needed to finish off the ZDs. Everyone I've popped open has had excessive foaming that seems to increase over time.

The pic below is a slow, thoughtful pour from today.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1458334205.753556.jpg

Even sitting open, the bottle continues to foam over.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1458334285.440579.jpg

The beer still tastes fine and the residual carbonation feels right.

Is this weird? I've never had a batch do this before. Of course, I took no notes on how much priming sugar I used, but I typically use 4-5 oz per 5 gallon batch.

 

[Pkrd]

I'm guessing something is slowly eating away at the residual sugars. Take a gravity sample and see if your FG has dropped.

 

[TheHopfather]

I'd vote an infection in the bottles. I had an issue a while back exactly like this. Ended up replacing a bunch of bottling equipment, continued to happen. Finally did a 5 day PBW soak on my bottles and its been smooth sailing since.

 

[ss4ivan]

Probably a bottle infection. I had it happen once or twice when I first started. It never caused any off flavors (even after 1 year+) but it would pour foam straight from the bottle and I had to wait what seemed like forever for the foam to go down so I could finish pouring the beer.
My bottling process at the time was to wash, rinse, sanitize a bit before bottling then let set on the bottling tree. They were dry when I bottled to them. Now I wash/rinse and fill 1/4 way with starsan and shake...leave starsan in bottle. Then shake and pour out starsan right before beer goes in so that the bottle is still wet with sanitizer. Have not had any issues since.

 

[jspain3]

I clean bottles the night before and then sanitize with Starsan using a vinator just prior to bottling. I usually do 12 bottles at a time. Thanks for the diagnosis everyone.

 

[deepbluegroove]

You may have not reached FG before you bottled, then the yeast kept working, creating lots of CO2. Or you added too much sugar. Always use a priming calculator. I had this problem when I made a porter. It definitely was not done fermenting. And so it did in the bottle. And every one I opened was a gusher and this just got worse over time. More fermentation over time = more C02

 

[Firewalker11]

You may have not reached FG before you bottled, then the yeast kept working, creating lots of CO2. Or you added too much sugar. Always use a priming calculator. I had this problem when I made a porter. It definitely was not done fermenting. And so it did in the bottle. And every one I opened was a gusher and this just got worse over time. More fermentation over time = more C02

That's happening right now with my Yoopers Oatmeal Stout, apparently it didn't finish all the way and is making more CO2.

 

[jspain3]

You may have not reached FG before you bottled, then the yeast kept working, creating lots of CO2. Or you added too much sugar. Always use a priming calculator. I had this problem when I made a porter. It definitely was not done fermenting. And so it did in the bottle. And every one I opened was a gusher and this just got worse over time. More fermentation over time = more C02

I would tend to believe you because it has been mostly isolated to a particular batch and seems to happen on every beer now. However, I did have one bottle from a newer batch that did the same thing, yet, it's the only one of 40+ bottles so far to have this issue.

Unfortunately, I did not take good notes on the affected batch.