Oh Noes, Gushers

[LeverTime]

I got a fermentation chamber that holds two batches at a time, so when I made lagers, I made two simultaneously. One is a schwarzbier, the other is a helles. I bottled them on the same day. I started drinking them recently, and was satisfied with how they turned out.

However, about a week ago I opened a schwarzbier, and it gushed out foam. It tasted ok, so I drank it. I did not die. Today, I opened a helles with the same result. I think it tasted ok, but I had just eaten a lot of half sour pickles, so that may have influenced my taste. I have opened about a dozen of each of these bottles so far, and only one of each was a gusher.

What do you think is the cause of this? Since it didn't happen to all my bottles, my first thought is that some of my bottles were not sanitized well enough. I've never had a gusher before in >20 batches.

I am obsessive about sanitation. Just to give you some idea of my bottle cleaning process: I pour the beer out, and then rinse out the bottles so that they look clean, dry them on a rack, and store them in a box until they are used. On bottling day, I rinse them off (they've usually acquired some dust), and put them in the dishwasher. Then I run the dishwasher without soap. When it is done, I start bottling. I dip each bottle into a bucket of Star San, dump the liquid out, and then fill it with my bottling wand.

 

[microbusbrewery]

Sounds like your sanitizing process is pretty solid. I'm assuming you take the same care in cleaning and sanitizing everything else. Assuming so and if it's only impacting a couple bottles, it could be that your priming sugar wasn't mixed as well as it should have been. If you find some undercarbed ones in addition to gushers, that'd confirm it.

 

[LeverTime]

Now that you mention it, I may have added the priming sugar a bit later on these two batches. I normally put it in first, then rack the beer on top. With these two I forgot to start the priming sugar boiling until I was ready to rack, and may have added it after a gallon or two of beer was already in the bucket.

Thanks for your reply, I bet that is it!

 

[NCangler17]

Yeah sounds like the priming solution was not evenly distributed throughout the bottles. Happens sometimes, and usually the last bottles have more sugar and can gush.