im confused with this, but it may make sense. feel free to diagnose - but beers i make that have high attenuation, ie. over 80% do NOT have this gushing problem. but beers that finish over 1.015, even if that is expected for the yeast/wort makeup ie. lots of specialty or roasted grains often end up slowly turning into huge gushers. its happening with a stout that was excellent at first and should have only been lightly carbonated, but it finished at 1.016 for a very low initial 65% attenuation after 4 weeks of sitting in the carboy. however a beer brewed around the same time, which finished dry (and intentionally so) at 1.007 for 84% attenuation has ZERO of this gushing style issue.
thoughts on this?
and
suggestions for getting rid of this issue? do i have to go extreme and buy new tubing or should i just alkaline-brewer wash my stuff well and then iodophor it and let it sit for a bit?
I have had mixed results soaking permeable hoses in brewery wash. I detect a soapy flavor for two to three beers afterwards. I simply soak hoses in hot water and air dry. I replace them ~annually or so.
However, I am pretty anal about disassembling, cleaning, air drying, reassembling, and sanitizing hardware — especially ball valves.
I believe iodophors will kill it once the item(s) are thoroughly cleaned.
okay, sorry i forgot to mention a few important details since i was in a rush.
i only bottle. some bottles are very clean, some have a sort of beer-stone film that i havent been able to remove fully even with mixes of PBW, scraping with a bottle brush and hot water.
this has been an ongoing thing hit or miss for several brews. ie. some beers do not do this at all, generally if they are well attenuated and especially if they do not have significant quantities of roasted malt (unfermentables/dextrins??), but this has been an issue on maybe 4 or 5 beers in total now. no bottle bombs yet knock on wood.
thanks for the note about the hoses retaining aroma/tastes. i might do a full soak in a bucket with slightly stronger than my usual solution of iodophor. i usually spray out that stuff.
high heat might also be an option for a lot of this stuff like pasteurization temps of say 160F for a time period.
I’m experiencing the same thing. I have been using the same hoses for 3 or 4 years, and recently made a few batches of Belgians with Belle Saison yeast (known diastaticus). My conclusion: Time to get new hoses. That’s my bet.
Possibly those bottles with ‘film’ it them are the culprit(s).
I picked up a great tip from Ken on how to clean beerstone: I picked up some milkstone acid wash from Tractor Supply and soak my kegs in it and hot water for a cpl days. Since I started doing that I haven’t had a beerstone problem.
If you can pinpoint it to the bottles, you might try soaking those bottles in that stuff.
If gushing occurs only when you have a higher FG, is it possible you’re bottling these beers too early or they need help completing fermentation?
This could be an infection problem but typically if there’s an infection it’s still going to appear in beers at 1.007 FG. Yeast or bacteria with diastatic properties can still find something to eat in a 1.007 beer. I would expect to see some degree of gushing even in those beers.
it IS possible. i was monitoring WLP530 and it definitely took a full 6 weeks to really settle. but the most recent beer was an irish ale strain by escarpment and it did its thing and did the peanut butter sediment after a week and then just sat there. my notes suggest i gave it about 34 days but i DID NOT use gelatin on it.
i mashed that beer too high i recalled, and i even put that in the notes i do on each beer.
i think what im going to be doing is mashing low, which i prefer anyway, trying to get the beers as attenuated as possible and giving them a lot of time, including trying to get the temps a little warmer during what i believe is the tail end of fermentation, etc.
It it’s beerstone, you need to use an acidic cleanser, and you still need to be able to reach the affected area with a sponge or brush (at least in my experience). Personally, I would toss those in the recycle bin.
Have you degassed a sample from one of the gushing bottles and tested the gravity? I’d be curious to see if it’s measurably lower than when you bottled it.
I pour back and forth because I’m concerned about evaporation over a few hours time. It wouldn’t take much evaporation to change gravity by a couple of points. I might be overthinking it, but it’s easy to pour back and forth.
Something else I haven’t seen mentioned yet - you suspect diastaticus as the culprit, but most STA1+ yeasts that I’m familiar with are POF+ as well. Any off flavors of note on these gushers?
Other random musings:
Beer stone may provide nucleation points that could trigger gushing
Possibly the yeast went into dormancy before it hit its max attentuation somehow? Maybe the process of racking and priming woke them back up? What temp are these being stored at? If its cold enough maybe the yeast is going dormant.
with a considerable further attenuation the flavour changes and i get some esters and i believe diacetyl increased and it does throw off the flavours i noted at bottling.
thinking hard about it today, im thinking it is simply incomplete fermentations for whatever reason with some yeasts. i was attributing this to hop creep several months ago, not sure if i mentioned it here.
thanks, i will just try to fix this from a few potential angles
I’ve tried to make hop creep happen several times so I could study it, but I couldn’t get it. I recently brewed a batch with over 12 oz of dry hops per 5 gal and still couldn’t get it. I don’t believe it’s as common as many think.
not sure what to say, but it may be a matter of my, others, and/or your process.
you dryhop at ~34F, right? do you run the beer through a plate chiller after? if after that point you store the beer at 40-50F temps ie. fridge temps while it carbonates in a keg you might just have whatever ale yeast kept cold enough that it inhibits any further fermentation.
not sure if this is what you do or if this would even in fact inhibit the “hop creep”, but perhaps?
Wow man, I don’t dry hop very often but a few times when I have, fermentations were invigorated and stuck ferments picked right back up. Hop creep can definitely be a big deal.
On the most recent batch, I added 12 oz pet 5 gal at 68F. No signs of hop creep. I have yet to see any definitive homebrew evidence about hop creep. Not saying it doesn’t happen, but I’m not convinced its as prevalent as some think.