Too much head but good carbonation

[bolus14]

Sorry if this has been asked/answered I couldn't find anything quite like this.

My last couple batches, a Belgian Pale and Yooper's Oatmeal Stout. When I open the bottles, some have been in the fridge for 2 weeks+ I'm getting a lot of foam. If I start to pour quickly the amount of foam is greatly reduced, if I let the bottle site for a few seconds it will start to overflow. Once poured the level of carbonation is good for each style.

Washing/sanitizing is like this. Soak in Oxiclean water overnight, put in dishwasher the following morning, which holds them at around 140-150 degrees for 40 minutes. Then soak in Star San as i'm bottling, bottles get soaked at least 5 min depending on where the fall in the filling process.

The BPA I carbed to 2.7 and the Stout to 1.9. The BPA has good lively carbonation with head and lacing lasting the whole time. The stout has low amount of carbonation but it's there and it's very smooth. Little bit of lacing and head last through most of it.

Any thoughts on what's causing the gushing?

 

[bolus14]

OK here's where I'm after looking around some more. Any thoughts?
1. Stout has become a volcano when opening and only get 1-2 inches of actual beer in the glass. All bottles have been put into the fridge to avoid getting bombs.
2. Thinking of sanitizing a carboy, getting a funnel and tubing to reach the bottom of the carboy, put bottles in to a tub of sanitizer soak and then pour into the funnel.
3. I think the yeast has woken up and my FG was too high so this should restart fermentation, hopefully the yeast will use up the oxygen introduced from pouring into the carboy.
Once FG reaches where I think it should and is stable for a few days, rebottle with new priming sugar.

I have tried slowly lifting the caps, placing back in the fridge, repeat, but these just keep being volcanic as soon as the cap is lifted.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Sounds to me like either you bottled too soon or that you picked up a gush infection.

 

[bolus14]

I'm thinking I bottles without it finishing. It was in the primary for 4 or 5 weeks I'd have to look back on notes to be sure. Gravity readings was some for over a week so I thought that maybe my mash temp got too high. FG should've been around 1.018 and was 1.022, I think, when I bottled it.

 

[flars]

OK here's where I'm after looking around some more. Any thoughts?
1. Stout has become a volcano when opening and only get 1-2 inches of actual beer in the glass. All bottles have been put into the fridge to avoid getting bombs.
2. Thinking of sanitizing a carboy, getting a funnel and tubing to reach the bottom of the carboy, put bottles in to a tub of sanitizer soak and then pour into the funnel.
3. I think the yeast has woken up and my FG was too high so this should restart fermentation, hopefully the yeast will use up the oxygen introduced from pouring into the carboy.
Once FG reaches where I think it should and is stable for a few days, rebottle with new priming sugar.

I have tried slowly lifting the caps, placing back in the fridge, repeat, but these just keep being volcanic as soon as the cap is lifted.

Pour one of the bottles into a very large container. Large enough to collect a sample that will fill your hydrometer sampling tube, to get a new SG reading. Let the beer go flat before checking the SG. Compare this reading to the previously recorded FG. If the readings are the same, you were at FG when the beer was bottled.
Problem could be excessive amount of priming sugar, for the volume bottled.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Check around in the inside of your bottles, right at the surface level of the beer. You may want to use a flashlight. Do you see a ring forming at the level of the beer? Prime indicator of infection. It's very common, you can't always taste it. Or, if you're picking up a slight phenolic note too, I'd almost guarantee that's what happened. If you left the beer in the primary for 4 or 5 weeks, I'd doubt that it was because fermentation wasn't finished. Prime suspect would be bottling bucket- did you take apart and clean/sanitize all the components of the spigot at the bottom prior to using it? If not, I'd bet that's your source right there. Either that, or the inside of tubing, or siphon, or some other bottling gear. If it's consistently overcarbed amongst all bottles, I'd doubt ti's a problem with the bottles themselves.

 

[brewcat]

Fridge is a good idea. I once overprimed a dubbel. They were kind of slow gushers. Would eventually raise out of the bottle. And they didn't start doing that until a month or so after bottling. I then put them in the fridge and eventually they stopped doing it. I also replaced my spigot and hose just in case.

It seems you are using the correct sugar amount but you may want to let us know what type and how much. And for how many gallons of beer.

 

[yeastylad]

Check around in the inside of your bottles, right at the surface level of the beer. You may want to use a flashlight. Do you see a ring forming at the level of the beer? Prime indicator of infection. It's very common, you can't always taste it. Or, if you're picking up a slight phenolic note too, I'd almost guarantee that's what happened. If you left the beer in the primary for 4 or 5 weeks, I'd doubt that it was because fermentation wasn't finished. Prime suspect would be bottling bucket- did you take apart and clean/sanitize all the components of the spigot at the bottom prior to using it? If not, I'd bet that's your source right there. Either that, or the inside of tubing, or siphon, or some other bottling gear. If it's consistently overcarbed amongst all bottles, I'd doubt ti's a problem with the bottles themselves.

All of this ^

I made an imperial stout a while back, bottled it, and ended up with gushers and a ring inside the neck of almost every bottle. Beer was drinkable, just ended up much drier and more carbonated that a stout should be. I'm certain now I had an infection in those bottles. I've been kegging since, and haven't had a problem, but it does sound eerily similar to my issue, apart from you saying your carb level seemed correct. Mine was way off (Im guessing due to the infection eating the priming sugar and more of the malt sugars than the original yeast could - way more CO2 than I expected).

 

[m00ps]

Yeah until I got a bottling tree and stepped up my [pre-bottling sanitation regimen, I had occasional gushers now and then. Now I only get gushers with the last 2-3 bottles from teh bucket that have a very large amount of yeast sediment. I use those couple ones as samples to try like a week after bottling since I know they wont be good months down the raod anyway

 

[bolus14]

First, thanks for the replies!!

For the most part I'm thinking bottling bucket or bottling wand, if it's an infection which I'm not convinced it is, but I'm having some foaming issues with a couple other brews too so I'm planning to replace them regardless. I do always take apart the spigot and store bucket, spigot, and bottling wand "disassembled," then clean and sanitize individually when bottling. I looked at 1/3 - 1/2 of the bottles and no rings at the top. Taste wise it's delicious, better than 95% of the commercial stouts under 7% ABV I've bought.

For the stout I really think it just hadn't finished fermenting. I found out my in laws, where I ferment my beers at, changed some settings on their dehumidifier in the basement where the fermenter was. The ambient temperature dropped lower than where it has been in the past, so I'm thinking after the first few days of fermentation it caused the yeast to drop out quicker. Ambient was at 60 when I checked, it used to stay at 64.

I split the 5.25gal batch, 3gal with vanilla extract and 2.25gal without, the 3 gal I used 1.6oz table sugar and the 2.25gal I used 1.2oz of table sugar, works out to be 1.9 vol CO2.

Last night I slowly released the cap on a bottle over a 3 hr period and the carbonation was still very prevalent. So, I let it sit in the fridge overnight, loosened the cap again and still a lot of carbonation there, this is after being in the fridge for about 1.5 weeks. Even if this works doing it with 50 bottles isn't going to happen. I'm still highly considering taking the approach of dumping the bottles through a funnel with tubing to the bottom into a carboy, check the SG, throw an airlock on it for a week and check then check the SG again, this time i'll keep it at around 72-75 degrees. Before I do that I'm going to do what flars mentioned and empty a bottle into a bowl, let it go flat and check the gravity, if it's below 1.024 then it fermented some more. The estimated FG was 1.014 so it had plenty of room to ferment some more.

 

[bolus14]

Last night i uncapped a bottle, let it "erupt" into a bowl, swirled it around each time I walked by it to get it to go flat quicker, then took a gravity reading. It's down to 1.018, reading at bottling time was 1.024, so it dropped 6 points after being bottled which would explain why they're so overcarbed. 1.018 is a little higher than what the estimated FG would be, so it may or may not have some more to go.

Now my only concern is preventing oxidization if I uncap and pour back into a carboy or fermenting bucket. I could add a little bit of sugar to ensure some form of fermentation kicks off, hopefully that would get the yeast to use up the oxygen, and completely ferment this.

Any thoughts, or does the approach I laid out above seem like the best option?

 

[bolus14]

Bit the bullet and uncapped today, took longer than i thought trying to get all, or most, of the foam out of the bottles. After about 24 bottles the fermenting bucket was almost to the top with foam, so had to wait about 15 min for that to settle down a bit. Poured the remaining bottles, about 20 more, and ended up with about 4.5 gal in the bucket. Airlock started bubbling immediately, obviously from the carbonation. Going to give it 8 or 9 hours to let most of the carbonation CO2 exhaust, then boil about 1/4lb of turbinado sugar with some water and then pour that it to get fermentation kicking in again.