Help with gushers - Milk Stout

[MamaSuesBrews]

Hi there,

Wondering if anyone has some advice for me. I made the below Milk Stout recipe with cold brewed coffee. I let it sit in primary for 2 weeks so pretty sure it fermented out. Hit all the right numbers with OG/FG. Bottled with 100grams of white table sugar. About 3 weeks later I noticed the caps were convexing so I opened one - GUSHER. They were all the same - a couple of bottles had small fracture lines, so of course I was worried and dumped it all. I added cold brewed coffee to the bottling bucket - could this be a problem? Any advice would be appreciated. I did get to taste it (albeit warm) and it was very nice so would like to have another go and get it right.




9 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
1 lbs 8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)
8.0 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)
1 lbs Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0.0 SRM) Sugar
1.50 oz Fuggles [3.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.50 oz Fuggles [3.80 %] - Boil 30.0 min
1.0 pkg British Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1335) [124.21 ml]
2.00 Cup Oslo Roasters Cold Brew Coffee (Bottling 5.0 mins)

 

[duboman]

"Pretty sure it fermented out" tells me you did not verify with hydrometer readings? Maybe it wasn't done?

Otherwise and most likely it got infected. Could have been the coffee or something else in your process.

Good thing you checked on them before they blew up


Sent from the Commune

 

[bigbadgreen]

I am going to second the making sure to take hydrometer readings to verify that fermentation is done. last summer I brewed a clone of founder's breakfast stout and without looking at my notes, i remember it taking it's sweet time fermenting. Yeast is a complicated issue that has so many factors involved in fermentation time.
By your recipe it looks like you are in the 1.06-1.07 OG range. I would suggest using a starter for your next batch. It's a cheap and easy insurance policy for starting off your beer.
Good luck on your next batch.

 

[Culbetron]

The fermentation might not have been done.
(or)
It was an infection
(or)
Perhaps the bottles got a lot warmer than the fermentation temp and the yeast did a little more work because of the higher temp,
(or)
You might have mismeasured your priming sugar

 

[Talgrath]

Hi there,

Wondering if anyone has some advice for me. I made the below Milk Stout recipe with cold brewed coffee. I let it sit in primary for 2 weeks so pretty sure it fermented out. Hit all the right numbers with OG/FG. Bottled with 100grams of white table sugar. About 3 weeks later I noticed the caps were convexing so I opened one - GUSHER. They were all the same - a couple of bottles had small fracture lines, so of course I was worried and dumped it all. I added cold brewed coffee to the bottling bucket - could this be a problem? Any advice would be appreciated. I did get to taste it (albeit warm) and it was very nice so would like to have another go and get it right.




9 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM)
1 lbs 8.0 oz Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)
8.0 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM)
1 lbs Milk Sugar (Lactose) (0.0 SRM) Sugar
1.50 oz Fuggles [3.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min
0.50 oz Fuggles [3.80 %] - Boil 30.0 min
1.0 pkg British Ale II (Wyeast Labs #1335) [124.21 ml]
2.00 Cup Oslo Roasters Cold Brew Coffee (Bottling 5.0 mins)

You made two mistakes, first you used too much priming sugar. For a beer using that yeast, at most you should have used 87 grams of sugar assuming you primed at 70F for 5 gallons, at least 51 grams of table sugar or about 69 grams on the average. 100 grams of table sugar is more in the range of an American Ale. If you don't want to do the math manually, there's a priming calculator here: http://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/

Secondly, cold brewed coffee has its own sugar content, so you exasperated things by adding even more sugar to the bottles for your beer to munch on. In the future, if you want to add cold brewed coffee you either need to calculate the sugar content and only use that, or you need to have it kick off a secondary fermentation or add it to the primary fermentation. When you prime the ONLY thing that should be added is the amount of sugar necessary for priming, anything else will cause bottle bombs like the ones you got.

 

[MKBoitnott]

Another possible issue is the effective mixing of priming sugar, a problem I have dealt with recently. You have make sure the sugar dissolves into the solution, or the first few bottle you filled would be bottle bombs.

I noticed because it was 22 oz bottle that were doing it and I always fill them first.


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[smyrnaquince]

Secondly, cold brewed coffee has its own sugar content, ...

Really?

 

[Talgrath]

Really?

I did some double-checking since cold brewed coffee tastes sweet unlike its warm brewed cousin and it looks like cold brewed coffee without any additives gets its sweetness from oils in the coffee; technically that's not sugar as shows up in nutritional information but it may be fermentable. It looks like most canned or bottled cold brewed coffee has some sugar in it, up to 4 grams. So it's possible I was incorrect that it was also a factor in the gushers, or perhaps not; if a variety was used that had added sugar or some of the oils that make the coffee sweet is fermentable then it could be a factor. Either way, way too much sugar in there for priming a stout using an english variety.

 

[Culbetron]

Priming with too much sugar for style doesn't mean the bottles should be gushers. It just means the stout will be as fizzy as an APA. If priming with enough sugar for an APA produces bottle bombs, then every APA you have every made would have exploded.

 

[Darwin18]

You probably didn't sanitize your bottles well enough or didn't mix your priming sugar well enough into the beer.

 

[cheezydemon3]

Secondly, cold brewed coffee has its own sugar content, so you exacerbated things by adding..........

SORRY!

I am sure he was exasperated dumping all of that stout though!

 

[Talgrath]

SORRY!

I am sure he was exasperated dumping all of that stout though!

I'm not sure what you're talking about, exacerbated is a word, definition:

ex·ac·er·bate
igˈzasərˌbāt/
verb
past tense: exacerbated; past participle: exacerbated

make (a problem, bad situation, or negative feeling) worse.

To rewrite the sentence with exacerbated swapped for its meaning would read something like this: "Secondly, cold brewed coffee has its own sugar content, so you made the situation worse by adding..." Vocabulary is fun!

 

[duboman]

Priming with too much sugar for style doesn't mean the bottles should be gushers. It just means the stout will be as fizzy as an APA. If priming with enough sugar for an APA produces bottle bombs, then every APA you have every made would have exploded.

+1


Sent from the Commune

 

[BlueHouseBrewhaus]

Possible source of infection - did you BOIL and cool the cold brew water first? Unlikely there were bugs in the water but possible.

 

[SpeedYellow]

Regardless of how it happened, just slowly and gently crack each bottle cap one at a time to relieve the pressure, and retighten with your capper. It shouldn't let in any significant amount of oxygen. Then hopefully you're all set.

 

[MKBoitnott]

Regardless of how it happened, just slowly and gently crack each bottle cap one at a time to relieve the pressure, and retighten with your capper. It shouldn't let in any significant amount of oxygen. Then hopefully you're all set.

I am really surprised that I have never heard this before. So simple, seems very logocal



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[ong]

Wait, were they just gushers at room temperature, or did you chill them for a few days before opening?

 

[MamaSuesBrews]

Gushers at room temp. Can't recap as half the content gushed out. Think it was an infection in the cold brew.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[aslander]

Secondly, cold brewed coffee has its own sugar content, so you exasperated things by adding even more sugar to the bottles for your beer to munch on.

There is no sugar, nor fermentables, that are produced when you cold brew coffee.

It is, however, possible to infect your batch when adding it. I had a stout get infected after adding cold brewed coffee. Not saying that is what is causing your issues, but for future reference.

 

[thCapn]

I have added cold brewed coffee to the keg (although not bottles) and have never had an issue with infection. Of course, those kegs went directly into the fridge, so the cold temps would have slowed down any potential problems considerably.


--
th Cap'n in Portland, Oregon

 

[SpeedYellow]

Yet another reason to avoid cold brewing. This is one of those silly homebrewing fads that adds nothing but risks everything, like using cocoa nibs instead of cocoa powder. Best bet is to cool the wort to 180-190F and steep the coffee a few minutes. Won't add a risk of infection that way.

 

[thCapn]

Perhaps, but it depends on one's tolerance for risk versus control. Adding brewed coffee (cold or hot brewed) to the finished product allowed me to control the final product better the first time. Adding coffee to steep may well have required some trial and error to get the ratio where I wanted it--get it wrong and my beer is either over or under flavored.

Lots of ways to skins a horse. Choose what works for you & all that.


--
th Cap'n in Portland, Oregon