infected bottle, tasting sweet?

[Kharnynb]

Have a wheat beer i made, first bottle tasted fine, but when i was labeling the bottles i noticed one bottle with some sediment and leaking around the bottle neck.

the bottle was a bit of a gusher, but not too bad, the beer however is insanely sweet. what causes that?

 

[eluterio]

Sediment if bottled condition is normal. The leaky cap is not and might have added to the gusher. It seems like it had a bug in it "infected" don't drink it you might turn into a zombie! kidding aside, the infection if this was the only bottle might be from the loose cap. It could have allowed something in or the bottle wasn't cleaned well enough or some other way for a bug to get into the bottle. If your other bottles don't start waking up and exploding your good.

For it to seem sweeter, Im not sure on this one. The additional fermentation while in the bottle most likely changed the profile of your beer and might have added some other things and it could lead to a perceive sweetness.

 

[ACbrewer]

Infected beers usually taste sour, not sweet. How did you add sugar for carbonation? Is there some way it could have been uneven? (extra sugar could explain both sweet and gusher).

Typically people dissolve bottling sugar in some hot water and then add that to the bottling bucket either before, or as they start the siphon from the fermenter. A good mix is obtained by the filling without having to stir. You can see this affect if you add your coffee to your cream, and not your cream to the coffee.

 

[Kharnynb]

i've done priming the same way as always, whirlpooled the priming sugar with some hot water in the bottling bucket.

The gunk around the bottle top wasn't just sediment, it was brown sticky goo on the cap and bottle neck.

 

[eluterio]

i've done priming the same way as always, whirlpooled the priming sugar with some hot water in the bottling bucket.

The gunk around the bottle top wasn't just sediment, it was brown sticky goo on the cap and bottle neck.

Interesting, well it could be from the slow gusher some of the beer was drying like a volcano slowly erupting. This could be the reason why it tasted sweeter from the goo on the neck. I don't think Ive ever read anything like this or heard of it. Non the less it was most likely from the cap not being on right to allow the co2 to vent. if non of the other bottles show this sign your good to go!

 

[flars]

I would suspect a dirty bottle being the source of an infection or your method of adding the priming sugar. Stirring the priming sugar into hot water in the bottling bucket may have left a load of sugar in the spigot. The sugar fermented out in the bottle causing excess pressure which leaked instead of blowing the bottle.

 

[Kharnynb]

ok, just to remove confusion, i put the sugar in the bottom of the bottling bucket, then i siphon the beer on top with the hose slightly angled to create a whirlpool.

my guess is indeed the bottle being infected, i put it seperately when labeling the bottles because it had some gunk on the edge too.

 

[Kharnynb]

picture of the cap with some of the gunk on it.

 

[flars]

ok, just to remove confusion, i put the sugar in the bottom of the bottling bucket, then i siphon the beer on top with the hose slightly angled to create a whirlpool.

my guess is indeed the bottle being infected, i put it seperately when labeling the bottles because it had some gunk on the edge too.

The sugar has been dissolved in about 16 ounces of boiling water before adding it to the bottling bucket?

 

[m00ps]

if its sweet and gushing to me that says you did not let the yeast finish attenuating. Thats why its sweet. They are now eating more sugars in the bottle. Thats why is gushed

you may have a batch of glass beer grenades looming in the future. Id check another one and be very careful it it does the same thing

 

[Kharnynb]

the previous bottle was fine and tasted just like previous batches, now that i look at the cap, it has a ripped edge on the plastic, maybe the damaged cap let something in.

 

[Kharnynb]

yes, the sugar is first boiled in 4 dl water and cooled a bit before putting on the bottom of the bottling bucket.

caps are boiled and everything else is cleaned in starsan. I'm not worried about the rest of the batch, just interested in what makes it both decently carbonated and also sweet tasting.

 

[m00ps]

what did the last gravity sample taste like?

 

[Kharnynb]

perfectly fine, as did the first bottle I opened and a third I opened after this one.

It really is just that one bottle.

 

[arbadarchi]

picture of the cap with some of the gunk on it.

I noticed from the picture that the seal is damaged. That's your culprit right there.

 

[Kharnynb]

very likely.

I know it's infected, and that the cap was probally the cause.

My question is really, what kind of infection causes a ready, but uncarbed beer to carb up fine, but be really sweet?