Gushing bottles

Basquebrewing

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Hi was wondering if anyone could help. I brewed a Dunkelweizen and bottle conditioned a week ago after 3 weeks fermenting.

As a test I thought I would try one tonight but the bottle gushed and only stopped once I poured some off into a glass. Any ideas why?

A few points, it is a weizen so the style called for more carbonation and thus priming sugar. My guess is due to an error during racking when I disturbed the yeast cake and got a shed load of yeast gunk into the bottling bucket. Would the yeast and gunk act as a nucleation point? Or is it possibly over carbonisation or an infection
 
Sorry should have mentioned tried a second bottle and same thing happened also no noticable off flavours and is actually quite tasty if I dont say so myself
 
An update. Tried a third one and it was like a bomb going off. I think it is over carbonation
 
I slightly opened to release some gas then resealed after reading advice online. Anybody had success or pointer in that regard? P.s. tonight was the worst time for this as am working at 6am tomorrow.... but if there is a chance to save the beer I will forego sleep. Haha
 
Too much priming sugar, or you bottled before fermentation was complete. Your bottles may behave better if they are opened while at near freezing temperatures. I'm working out a similar issue now. I think my issue may be caused by an improperly cleaned counterflow chiller. I don't have any off flavors, either. My bottles are fine until they are 3-4 months old.
 
You might be in for a surprise in the middle of the night!! If they're building up pressure still, they could explode. You may have to open them all back up or risk having them all go boom. I hope that's not the case but it has happened to some people before. Usually because fermentation wasn't complete, or as others said, too much priming sugar.

Can you give us the details? What temps they have been stored at during conditioning? What temp they are when you're opening them? How MUCH priming sugar you used, and your total batch size?
 
I recently had a blueberry/blackberry sparkling mead that I thought was finished fermenting and it wasn't. Had two bottles explode in the container I was keeping them in. I always store carbonated beverages like that in a bin and wrap towels around them, as in I tuck folds of the towel(s) down in between as many bottles as possible to prevent one from blowing and then taking another one in the concussion. Helps keep the mess manageable. If more and more start going though, I'd (sadly) recommend opening them up and trying to salvage the batch if possible, by collecting them in another vessel and putting a fermentation lock on it again; but I've not actually done this. Have just had others tell me to do it if more bottles kept exploding. Fortunately for me, they stopped.
 
I've tried the opening and recapping with limited success. Open them and recap then put them in the fridge. Invited some friends over and drink them.
 
I think this is a new thing lately, off brand bottle or something odd like violent yeast, in 30 years of brewing 15 of it bottling I never had a single break or gusher although back then yeast wasn't the same as today
 
It is possible they hadnt finished fermenting the gravity reading was 1.012 when the yeast reportedly gets down to 1.007. I just wrote this off as usual as most of my other beers hadnt reached full attenuation and I had no problems. Especially as it was 3 weeks in the tub.

A few other things that could have affected it. I dont have a temp controlled fermentation system but have an internal store room which holds a steady temp. It was a steady 18°c but after a bit of a cold spell it has dropped to 16°c this week. Unfortunately, I wasnt paying attention to when this drop happene. This could have slowed fermentation and/or thrown out my priming sugar calculations as the beer would have had a higher CO2 concentration at lower temperatures before bottling.
 
I had the same problem, but I just drank those bottles as quickly as possible. Also agree that it doesn't seem as bad if the beer is ice cold. Also, use a bit bigger glass than you need.
I did have 2 or 3 22oz bottles of barley wine explode, but they were in an unplugged chest freezer so it wasn't too bad. Definitely agree that you should do that if you're at all worried about them exploding.

FWIW, I've gotten a bit gun shy about it and typically carb to the lower end of the style. Some bottles still seem to pour a lot of head, but nothing close to a gusher.

Also, I didn't see how /how much you primed. I know you shot for what was appropriate for style, but how much sugar did you use?
 
I can´t remember exactly how much I used but used the calculator on here and aimed for the middle of the range for weizens. Thinking back and looking at the brew log, I think I factored in 20 litres for the priming sugar but only ended up bottling 18.5 litres so maybe that could affect the over priming.

I have released gas twice now and pretty confident that whilst some may be a bit gushy if I cool enough I should be OK... so fingers crossed.
 
That could be part of it too.
Thinking about it, I use the fermenter volume in the calculator without adjusting for losses. It seems I corrected the gushing from the other end of the problem.

Good luck!
 
Now I have an excuse to drink them all quickly and when my girlfriend complains I can point out I am merely protecting the newly painted walls from a covering of beer. :D
 
Haha, and shards of small glass. Won't someone think of the barefooted children!?
 
Yeah, I have normally factored the fermenting amount when calculating priming sugar. I have never had a problem before but I guess it could be that I have brewed low carbonated British type ales and I just got it a little fizzier than style but didn´t pay attention to it.
 

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