Too much head?

Ward Chillington

Ward Chillington

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OK, OK...simmer down! And that's what I hadda tell my beer last night! :D:rolleyes::D:rolleyes:

So I stumbled on the last bottle of one of the batches I did a few months ago to better understand different yeast brand results on the same wort. After popping the crown off the bottle, I went across the kitchen to get a glass and when I came back I noticed that there was a nice foamy head creeping its way up the bottle neck and was within a couple of millimeters of reaching the top and spilling down the side of the bottle. Not wanting to have a mess to clean up, I began to gently pour my brown ale into my glass in the proper manner, tilted glass and all but to my surprise, I was only pouring out foam! I kept it up until I had a full pint glass of brown foam and only about a finger's width of actual beer in the glass and still a half bottle of beer in the bottle. WTF!?

What's going on here folks??

Here's some other data points for you while you put on your thinking caps:

The earlier consumed bottles of this batch did not do this.
This was the last bottle of a batch brewed in early February this year using Windsor that only got down to a SG of 1020 resulting in a low ABV.
I used dextrose for my Priming Sugar.
The beer was about 55° F , the glass was a little warmer by some 10 degrees.

Here's my thought...as this low ABV was most likely due to under pitching but still the yeast did their job but just took a longer time to do it, like 2 months! The additional sugar AND the remaining sugar added in the bottling process went beyond the point of carbonation that I thought I was calculating for a 2 point something volume of CO2 and went over that but not to the point of a gushing potential bottle bomb.

Thoughts??
 
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My initial thought is quite simple: when you put the bottle down, you bounced it hard on the surface or just bumped in somewhere along the way from fridge to counter.

(Who remembers opening a bottle for a friend and gently tapping the top of their bottle with the bottom of yours while innocently saying "Cheers". In seconds the beer would be running out of their bottle and they would have to drink as fast as possible. Ahh...youth.)

Aside from that, when did this bottle get put in the fridge? Just recently, or a long time ago with others from this batch? I cant see how one beer (out of ??) would over-carb unless it was left warm longer than all the others. Interesting.
 
What was the recipe and what was the expected FG?

I've found that most of the time when i have carbonation issues, it's one of two things.
  1. I didn't let the beer ferment out to FG.
  2. I guessed at the amount of beer in the fermenter without actually measuring it.
My guess based on the info you've given is that you didn't let it get down to FG before bottling. Just my two cents.

At Least you didn't have any bottle bombs!
 
I've had that happen. My conclusion was that I had more bottling sugar than desired for the batch and the extra time and/or temp over carbonated it. I also thought that I didn't mix it well, so now I do a more thorough process.
 
AGbrewer said:
What was the recipe and what was the expected FG?

I've found that most of the time when i have carbonation issues, it's one of two things.
  1. I didn't let the beer ferment out to FG.
  2. I guessed at the amount of beer in the fermenter without actually measuring it.
My guess based on the info you've given is that you didn't let it get down to FG before bottling. Just my two cents.

At Least you didn't have any bottle bombs!
Click to expand...

Yeah, agreed with exception to the volume of beer I was dealing with but indeed I got impatient about 2 weeks in the fermentation cycle and multiple attempts at giving things a swirl to wake up the yeast.

Megary said:
My initial thought is quite simple: when you put the bottle down, you bounced it hard on the surface or just bumped in somewhere along the way from fridge to counter.

(Who remembers opening a bottle for a friend and gently tapping the top of their bottle with the bottom of yours while innocently saying "Cheers". In seconds the beer would be running out of their bottle and they would have to drink as fast as possible. Ahh...youth.)

Aside from that, when did this bottle get put in the fridge? Just recently, or a long time ago with others from this batch? I cant see how one beer (out of ??) would over-carb unless it was left warm longer than all the others. Interesting.
Click to expand...

Ahh yes, youth indeed! But no that didn't happen. The beer was about 55° F
 
I'm confused. (Common occurrence).

So this one bottle out of the whole lot was over-carbed...but the rest were fine? And this unique bottle was handled, allowed to carb and then cold condition just like all the rest? o_O

How long prior to opening the foamy beer was it since you opened the second to last of this batch?
 
Megary said:
I'm confused. (Common occurrence).

So this one bottle out of the whole lot was over-carbed...but the rest were fine? And this unique bottle was handled, allowed to carb and then cold condition just like all the rest? o_O

How long prior to opening the foamy beer was it since you opened the second to last of this batch?
Click to expand...


Yes, it's been about 2 months that this batch has been in the bottle and it's easily been 1 month that is lone bottle has been in my mid 50° basement and yes, this bottle is an odd ball..it tasted OK but a whole lotta head.
 
Likely the batch had residual sugars from high FG and this one had time for the yeast to utilize what was there and over-carb.
Either that or a slight secondary "infection" found some extra sugars that the yeast missed. Sometimes there's not a lot of off flavor associated with a slightly infected bottle, especially if held at low temps, and the only real symptom is gushing.
 
J A said:
Likely the batch had residual sugars from high FG and this one had time for the yeast to utilize what was there and over-carb.
Either that or a slight secondary "infection" found some extra sugars that the yeast missed. Sometimes there's not a lot of off flavor associated with a slightly infected bottle, especially if held at low temps, and the only real symptom is gushing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's what I'm gonna go with...it makes the most sense given the events
 
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Did it look like this?
20200517_151456.jpg

This happened to me on my Belgian "Bock" which I suppose was not as done as I thought despite it staying the same FG over several days... Admittedly it had only been in the fridge for a couple hours... So I hope that has something to do with it! Gonna open another today and see...
 
Could this one bottle have had a small bit of crud in the bottom that went unnoticed? That would account for only one bottle in the batch being a gusher.
 
In my case, it happened on two bottles but neither had been chilled for very long - less than 12 hours. I think that may have been it. My buddy opened one last night and there were no issues. They've now been cold for a couple days.
 
Naaa, never was a "gusher" in the literal sense....while it did start to come out of the bottle, it was slow...very slow. I think it was not an infection as there was no off flavor ...just a ton of foam.
 
I had a coffee porter like that, had to be a year and a half ago. Every bottle would have some foam creep out and run down the side ever so slightly. Probably just a tad too much priming sugar.
 
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