I poped open a few bottles of my latest brew and each one erupted. The entire bottle turned to foam. Within in a minutes every ounce of liquid turns into foam.
I know I screwed something up, but I’m not sure what?
Any similar experiences out there?
From what I understand, this could be an infection from a sanitizing issue. It has only happened to me on one bottle from a batch a couple years ago. All the other bottles from that batch were OK.
Either the fermentation was not complete when bottling occurred or you experienced a sanitation issue.
Yeah, when any of the aforementioned things happen it causes too much CO2 to go into solution with the beer. Then, when starts coming out of solution, (i.e. when the pressure is released) it comes out too quickly causing all of the beer to turn to foam.
How long did you let the beer ferment before you bottled it? Can you post the recipe?
As others have mentioned, it is most likely either bottling after incomplete fermentation or an infection.
What I want to add is that you should be very careful around these bottles. Honestly, I would carefully un-cap them all and dump them out. If it continues to ferment, you might have a bunch of bottle bombs on your hand.
The recipe was a very simple extract lager recipe that I had thrown together. I gave it 9 days in the primary at 50F and then 10 days in the secondary at 45F. My air stop wasn’t bubbling but every few minutes, and visually the beer seemed to be at a complete standstill. I did not take a hydrometer reading. I don’t have a ton of experience but to my knowledge it had completed fermenting.
I’m thinking it’s a sanitation issue.
I’m not sure if there is a simpler (or more correct) way to sanitize bottles but I sanitized my bottles using a 72 min, added heat wash in my dishwasher. This has always worked for me in the past. Does anyone have a better way to sanitize?
I’m thinking something must have got into the beer itself, because every bottle I have opened has been the same characteristics. I think that I need to spend a little time soaking all my equipment in bleach water and I may need to grab a new Better Bottle just to be safe. Cross your fingers that the beer that is in there now isn’t screwed up.
What yeast and how much? Based on your short fermentation schedule, I don’t think it was finished. You were fermenting at a low temp, which takes longer. And I don’t trust visual signs…I trust my hydrometer.
+1
Let your hydrometer be your guide.
Chalk it up as a valuable lesson. Next time estimate where you need to be in gravity units and react accordingly.
Good Luck.
It was a White Labs German Lager yeast.
Lessoned learned. Sadly it took 52 bottles dumped down the drain.