Excessive bottle carbonation - what am I doing wrong?

[RichardMW]

Hi everyone

I'm having issues with excessive carbonation in my bottle conditioned beer. No explosions (yet), but they are foaming up massively upon opening, huge jets shooting up from the bottle resulting in lots of mess and a minimal amount being left to drink.
It's a Black IPA. Brewfather batch info is here
I batch primed 5 litres into standard 500ml bottles directly from the FV with 31g of plain old white caster sugar. I got this amount of priming sugar from one of the numerous calculators found on the web which I guess all work in the same way. Chose IPA as the style.
Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Specific questions:

1. The calculator gets you to input the fermentation temperature. Some of them ask for "peak fermentation temperature" but others I have found ask for temperature at bottling. Which is the correct one to use? I have to admit that I do struggle to keep the fermentation temperature consistent. I plan to remedy this though by moving house so I have room for a fermentation fridge!
2. I've been looking into repurposing an Adnams Ghost Ship 5L minikeg for my next batch, and some of the various youtube videos I've found showing how to do this use only 12g of sugar directly into a 5L keg, so this got me thinking that I've been putting to much sugar in my FV when batch priming bottles. It's less than half the amount that the calculator suggests! Thoughts?

The beer tastes superb by the way - All Grain mash for me all the way now - never going back to extract kits. I just need to scale up my 10L stock pot BIAB setup! Recipe here

Thanks guys, and happy brewing!

 

[paintingken]

Are you sure it had finished fermenting? Did you take 2 gravity readings a day apart and they were the same?

 

[Duffmann]

31g is about 3 gramms per bottle, that should be fine. I suppose you did not use 31 gramms per bottle

 

[RichardMW]

Are you sure it had finished fermenting? Did you take 2 gravity readings a day apart and they were the same?

Yes, did this. All fermented out.
Thanks.

 

[RichardMW]

31g is about 3 gramms per bottle, that should be fine. I suppose you did not use 31 gramms per bottle

Absolutely not. That would be almost half a bag of sugar!
Thanks for your reply though.

 

[nixhaz]

Might be a stupid question, but are you chilling the beers before opening? Warm beer is much more likely to gush.

What was the finishing gravity of the beer?

 

[The Baron]

Loads of questions that may help
were the bottles scrupulously clean as it is possible a mild infection from a previous batch?
What was the FG
How much headspace did you leave
are you serving the bottles chilled
what yeast did you use was it the same as the recipe
does the remaining beer taste ok or any off flavours
I suspect you have done all these but eradicating them will help with diagnosis
It does sound like a possible infection to me if they are truly gushing as overcarbing with the amount of sugar seems out of the question
Did all the hops matter drop out of suspension as hop debris in bottles can cause nucleation points and gushing?

 

[Richard_H]

So its a strong dark all grain batch that despite you doing everything by the book is somehow over primed? I'm going on a crazy theory that it is actually to do with the dark grains as its something I have had happen to me several times and when I looked into it there did seem to be some science behind this theory which off the top of my head I cant remember but it was something along the lines of some of the sugars from the darker/roasted grains taking longer for the yeast to breakdown. Meaning that after several months in the bottle, tiny amounts were still being consumed if bottle conditioned.

For now all you can do is gently open the caps slightly to release some pressure, if you get foam leaking out the side then you may have to think ahead and do this several hours before wanting to drink and they must be cold crashed.

 

[Cestrian]

Huge jets or gushers on opening is not over carbonation it’s due to an infection in my experience. check your cleaning and sanitation.

 

[RichardMW]

Might be a stupid question, but are you chilling the beers before opening? Warm beer is much more likely to gush.

What was the finishing gravity of the beer?

I did try chilling a bottle and yes the activity was less, but still fizzed over.

OG 1.054
FG 1.012

Thanks.

 

[AXW123]

It also sounds like a slight infection to me. This doesn’t mean the beer will always taste bad but the gushing is an issue.

 

[Galena]

I had a brew do that recently and it was certainly an infection, in fact it was a split batch, same brew into 2 FV's, the only difference was the yeast, one batch was fine, the other a gusher. The same batch of yeast was used subsequently and was fine, so it must have been an infection from the FV. I suspect you have an infection

 

[moto748]

Agree with the other posters. Ballpark, your 3g per bottle of sugar is about right. It's what I work on, some use a little less. But it's not far away. So most likely your problems stem from warm beer, 'not finished fermenting', or an infection, or some combination of the three.

 

[RichardMW]

Loads of questions that may help
were the bottles scrupulously clean as it is possible a mild infection from a previous batch?

Bottles were washed/brushed in soapy hot water. Everything that went into the wort, or that the wort went into, after the boil, was sanitised using a Sodium Percarbonate no rinse sanitiser

What was the FG

FG 1.012

How much headspace did you leave

filled 500ml bottles up to just past the "shoulder" of the bottle

are you serving the bottles chilled

I've tried one chilled, and it did reduce the spurting but still fizzed over until most of the ale was out of the bottle

what yeast did you use was it the same as the recipe

Fermintis Safale US-05 as per recipe

does the remaining beer taste ok or any off flavours

Beer tastes great

I suspect you have done all these but eradicating them will help with diagnosis
It does sound like a possible infection to me if they are truly gushing as overcarbing with the amount of sugar seems out of the question
Did all the hops matter drop out of suspension as hop debris in bottles can cause nucleation points and gushing?

Yes, it dropped out ok. A bit of sediment in the bottles, but not too much, and assume this is ok

 

[RichardMW]

Wow, went out for a long walk and came back to loads of replies!
Thanks for all your input folks. I never knew about infection causing gushing beer but enough of you seem to think that's the likely cause so it's been a good discussion.
Only thing to do I suppose is polish off this batch quickly, before any infection makes it taste bad, and keep practicing - such hardships! haha
And of course redouble my sanitisation efforts.

Any ideas on my specific questions in my original post?

Thanks everyone

 

[The Baron]

Hi Rich thanks for answering the questions all seems well there as I suspected the only thing is when you say you fill just past the shoulder of the bottle do that mean that you have over a inch of space at the top as that is what most brewers would advise to do just enough for expansion as it gases up but minimise the oxygen in the bottle however that would not cause the gushing.
I am going back to my thoughts on the infection as some infections do not always make the beer taste bad but will ferment some of the other type of sugars in the beer and create over carbing.
It looks like a few other brewers are having the same conclusion

 

[Galena]

1) I always go with peak fermentation temperature.

2) The calculator will calculate for the volume of CO2 you input, the volume and peak temperature but I believe for the mini kegs of that design 12g I have seen as the recommended amount.

 

[RichardMW]

1) I always go with peak fermentation temperature.

2) The calculator will calculate for the volume of CO2 you input, the volume and peak temperature but I believe for the mini kegs of that design 12g I have seen as the recommended amount.

thanks. any idea why the calculator gives 30g odd for 5L batch, so 3g per 500ml bottle, but the recommended amount for a keg of the same capacity is only 12g?

Definately going to mini-keg my next batch. if I have the same fizzing issues at least I can reseal it and let it settle a bit longer!

 

[Galena]

well 12g in 5 litres would give you about 1.5 volumes CO2, so that would depend on the beer style and your taste. I have never used a shop bought mini keg, though do have two for that purpose I have not used yet.

 

[Sandimas]

When did you brew it? Infections usually take a while to take hold and change the characteristic of the beer, this is usually months not weeks.

How long was it in the FV? Some brews slow right down at the end but still keep going quite slowly.

Probably best sort out your issues before your brew the next batch. Minikegs have been know to explode under pressure.