What would lead to crazy carbonation?

JG81 · Aug 21, 2014

So I finished my Guinness clone. The taste is really solid, but whenever I open a bottle, it is fine for about 40 seconds than starts foaming like crazy and overflowing. What would lead to that?

JonM · Aug 21, 2014

Ho long has it been in the fridge? If it's been less than 48 hours, the CO2 might not be totally in solution yet. Other possibilities include:

1) Bottling too soon
2) Too much priming sugar
3) Inadequately mixed priming sugar
4) Infection

Reindeer · Aug 21, 2014

I had a problem with overcarbonation on several batches. Too much priming sugar seemed to be the culprit for me.

Use this:
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html

charliehorse · Aug 21, 2014

You may not have waited until fermentation was complete. How many days in a row were your gravity readings the same?

Yooper · Aug 21, 2014

Since it's fine when you first open it, but then foams up like crazy, it sounds like a gusher infection. I'd step up the sanitation for next time, perhaps bleach bombing all glass, especially bottles, before reusing.

FiddlersGreen87 · Aug 21, 2014

Yooper said:
Since it's fine when you first open it, but then foams up like crazy, it sounds like a gusher infection. I'd step up the sanitation for next time, perhaps bleach bombing all glass, especially bottles, before reusing.

I think Yooper hit it on the head. I made an Oatmeal Stout last year that would give 4th grade science projects a run for their money. Every time I popped a top it took about 2-5 seconds and turned into a geyser of about a foot high from the top of the bottle.

I actually had mold on the fermenter when I opened it to move to bottles. None was actually in the beer, just around the top of the lid, so I decided to try bottling it anyway. The bottles were clean, and I wasn't ready to toss 5 gallons of stout. I sanitized meticulously, but living in Hawaii (mold/bacteria prone climate) I think the buckets developed scratches that allowed the spores to leech into the plastic.

The 1/4 of the bottle that didn't turn to foam was drinkable at first, not really good or anything, but I had to at least taste it. Well as I let them sit over an additional month, they all became geysers and started developing more and more off tastes.