Gushers again

[jeg3]

Are you sure it's hop debris? My gushers have debris too but it's not from hops, I don't dry hop anymore due to the suggestion it can cause gushers. My gushers have produced a load more CO2 and the by-product is that debris, a bit like the stuff you get at the bottom of a normal bottle-conditioned beer but much, much more of it. In fact, if you hold my bottles up to the light, you can identify the gushers before you open them due to the amount of extra in the bottom.

The yeast sticks to the bottle and when I poured one through a tea strainer it definitely looked like hops. But if you don't dry hop then it's probably not hop debris

 

[Wynne]

I have this exact phenomenon in a Mangrove Jacks Irish Stout kit. Some bottles gush, some don't. My research (30 bottles in) suggests the gushers have hop debris.

Did you use hops, by any chance? I can see the fine fragmentsfrom T90 pellets providing nucleation sites for CO2 coming out of solution. I applaud your dedication to research.

 

[jeg3]

Did you use hops, by any chance? I can see the fine fragmentsfrom T90 pellets providing nucleation sites for CO2 coming out of solution. I applaud your dedication to research.

The kit included a pack of goldings pellets for dry hopping. I hadn't dry hopped for a number of years but previously just chucked whole hops in the FV. So I just tipped the pack of pellets in, then realised I should have put then in a bag or a strainer of some kind once it was too late.

Having said that they don't gush excessively but it is overcarbed. To counter this I decant into a litre jug then into the glass. It is a lovely beer

 

[moto748]

Excuse me butting in, but how are you defining a 'gusher' here? Do you mean bottles that burst/leak, causing spillage, or do you just mean bottles that are a torrent of foam when you open them?

 

[The Baron]

It means a bottle that foams over when you open them

 

[Wynne]

Excuse me butting in, but how are you defining a 'gusher' here? Do you mean bottles that burst/leak, causing spillage, or do you just mean bottles that are a torrent of foam when you open them?

Torrent of foam describes it well - beer erupts out of the bottle very soon after the caps removed. In my case leaves about 1/4-1/3 of beer in the bottle m8xed up with yeast.

 

[Sandimas]

In my expereince, bottles that foam then turn into torrents of foam and then go bang, they're all the same thing if you leave them long enough. I've never had a brew that just foams, as soon as that starts I drink the batch very quick as the bottles are going to explode if you leave them too long, as fermentation has re-started.

 

[moto748]

I have never ever had a bottle explode. But I guess I have had the occasional 'gusher' if it's defined as above. I *always* pour beer from bottle into a large jug (usually a 2 litre one). Even if it's a torrent of foam (and this is very very rare), I generally find that if you leave the jug of foam for five minutes, nine times out of ten you can pour a perfectly drinkable pint out of it.

 

[Loiner-62]

Since returning to brewing had one batch do this, a John Finch house pale ale. Before bottling, the FG had stuck at a slightly higher than expected value; tried pitching fresh yeast along with a couple of other tips from the forum but decided after the best part of a week without moving I had to bottle it and wait and see. First 10-15 bottles were fine, if a little low on carbonation. opened one on a Saturday night which made a loud hiss as I cracked the cap. Was just about to say 'sounds a bit lively..' when it erupted like a geyser, or the coke and mentos trick. Just managed to get a tea towel over the top but even so sprayed me, the wife, the ceiling and most of the walls in the living room - just after we'd redecorated. Luckily we both saw the funny side as they used to say in the Viz letters page.

Every bottle since that point erupted to varying degrees, none as spectacular as the first gusher. Most ended up down the sink / all over the garden. Even pouring into a 2.5L jug, the jug is overflowing long before the bottle is empty. Managed to save / recover a couple of half pints with some bottles and it still tastes fine so leads me to think it's not a contamination/cleanliness.

On reflection I put it down to a combination of a restart of the fermentation and possibly over priming some bottles. When I first got back into it I primed each bottle so also likely that amounts added to later bottles were a bit more generous. Now prime the whole batch before bottling and no repeat.

 

[Twopan]

Great description! I have a batch of Mangrove Jack's Pale Ale bottled in 550ml Newkie Brown bottles. Had real trouble with stuck fermentation and added extra dextrose to get it going again, which it did. Finally finished at 1.010 rather than the 1.006 projected in the guide. Primed the whole batch of 23L with 140g of dextrose at racking off time. Weirdly now, some bottles are livelier than others, but none of them gush, just come out a bit fizzy. Nothing to write home about. Then I found the bottom out of one bottle and a neatly washed garage floor. This happened 5 weeks after bottling. The fact that the beer is not gushing suggests to me that it was just a weakness in the bottle, rather than excessive secondary fermentation. However, if another one goes pop....