How to cap on foam

[corncob]

Last batch I bottled, I changed the order of my normal steps for no reason at all, and may have stumbled onto something new:

I had my lovely assistant bottling from my fermzilla all rounder, under slight co2 pressure, using a bottling wand. I never use an air lock--I just leave the prv open. Since I'm making ales, there's a solid flow of co2 out for 3 or 4 days. I don't worry about contamination. When things slow down, I close the prv. So the beer finishes under just a tiny bit of pressure. Maybe 2psi. So the beer has just a little more carbonation than it would at atmospheric. I only mention this because it might be important--I don't know, I haven't had a chance to test it again.

So she's filling them. And I start dropping a half teaspoon of table sugar through my sanitized funnel, but AFTER the beer is in the bottle. Up until now I always primed first. The first bottle comes to me, I drop the sugar in, I start fiddling with the bail (these are flip tops--do not try this with crimp-on caps), and one second layer a geyser of dense creamy cappuccino foam erupts from the bottle. I do not panic. I press the lid down, center it, and snap the bail over. Nucleation sites! That's what happened. Almost made a significant mess. But, there was zero oxygen left in that bottle when I compressed that gasket. It looked like video from a high speed bottling line. So I did the rest of the batch that way without incident.

I am optimistic that this might be the silver bullet for excluding oxygen for bottle conditioned homebrew in the future. All you need are flip-top bottles, table sugar, a funnel, and good nerves. The delay from priming to foam is variable from 1-3 seconds (during this eternity you wipe any spilled sugar off the rim) , but once that column of beautiful cream starts rising in the bottle neck, it's like the starting lights at the drag strip. Your window to get the top pressed on the bottle with your thumb between completion of a total purge of the headspace and eruption is a fraction of a second.

It's invigorating.

 

[sibelman]

I just found this old post. Thanks for this entertaining story, @corncob.

 

[corncob]

So the beer finishes under just a tiny bit of pressure. Maybe 2psi. So the beer has just a little more carbonation than it would at atmospheric. I only mention this because it might be important--I don't know, I haven't had a chance to test it again.

It turns out that, in order for this to work, you need to finish under the slightest pressure. But this method has really proven itself for me. I hope you have good results.

 

[sibelman]

slightest pressure

I rarely bottle nowadays, and ideally would want to bottle fully carbed beer rather than relying on bottle conditioning like in the good ole days. Stronger beers sometimes didn't bottle carb as well as hoped, but they're the ones I'd want to bottle now.

Bottling highly carbed beer poses the challenge of way too much foam, rather than the slight foaming in your technique. I'm still dithering about which way to go with the Dubbel that's in the fermenter now. I could bottle-prime slightly carbed beer per the @corncob method, or try getting fully carbed beer into (chilled) bottles, maybe using Trong's "Cheap-n-Cheer" tap head or an even lower tech solution like a tube jammed into a picnic tap as in these HBT posts. Or buy a Last Straw, Beer Gun or counterpressure filler. So many choices!