Need HELP! Stat. Gushers....

Ok so I have been brewing about 2 years maybe 25 batches this has happened once before with another heavy stout in the past… I brewed a 1.090 pretty standard stout primary ferment for 2 weeks moved to secondary on top of 2 pounds of PB powder and a few ounces of the cacao nibs let sit in secondary for like 2 months… FG was 1.022 s-05 was the yeast. FG was highest I have ever seen but it had been months? Had to be done airlock was flat dropped beer was beautiful dark clean nothing floating on the top looked great. Bottled with NB fizz drops so I know it was measured correct but the high FG is concerning… Opened a flip top bottle and it was a gusher 2/3 of the bottle came out before it was done. Drank the rest, the beer is fantastic best I have ever brewed I mean competition winning beer I can’t throw it out… So I panicked and moved them all to the fridge they have been in the bottle for 2 weeks. There is a mix of 22’s and 12’s none have exploded yet… Will they at this point? Did I do the right thing? What can I do? All bottles were rinsed, filled with star san and rinsed again by hand. I am looking for any advice I can get. First hand knowledge prefered second hand less so. When a bottle explodes is it dangerous or just messy?

I just tried to vent a couple with a flat blade cap remover gently let them barely hiss until foam started to show then resealed with capper and put back into fridge the foam made me nervous so I did 3 test bottles and seperated them from the others… If they don’t explode I think I will do this to the others once they are actually cold.

How much of the priming drops did you use?  That is the first question.  I have never used these so I am not sure how much is recommended and how much fermentable sugar is in the drops  You may have overdone it a bit.  That would be my guess.

Most of my stouts finish over 1.020 so I wouldn’t be concerned about that, especially if you recipe has a lot of unfermentables in it like roasted grains and dextrine malt (e.g. Carapils).  I assume this is an all grain recipe.

Normally when you have a bottle bomb, it blows off the cap and makes a mess rather than exploding the bottle itself.  That said, I have see some crappy bottles that seem to have thinner glass that could be a problem but normally the pressure doesn’t get that high to burst the bottle even with the crappy ones.  I just looked online and found that commercial beer bottles can be pressurized up to 45 PSI before they explode which is probably way more than what you are dealing with here since the caps have not blown off.

Check the bottles you have depressurized.  They may now be OK since the yeast has probably eaten up all the sugars and the will not pressurize the bottles any further.  You might still have enough CO2 in solution to cause them to gush.  If they still do, depressurize them again and do it when they are cold since the CO2 will not come out of solution as violently as when they are warm.

I have used them for almost every beer I have ever made they are quite simple to use 1 drop for 12 Oz 2 drops for 22. The priming sugar was done correctly without a doubt I physically look in all the bottles before I fill them to make sure I didn’t accidentally double up.

I just checked one of the ones I vented again and it’s still crazy they also aren’t very cold yet. When I am venting them thing about the amount of gas that comes out of a normal healthy beer when you open it a crisp “phsst” about that much lol… After that it immediately starts to fill the air gap in the bottle with foam and I stop and reseal.

Once they get good and cold in the fridge the yeast will die right? Trying to stop any fermentation in there so it doesn’t get any worse… Once they are cold can I put them back in the cupboard or will the yeast start back up again?

Nope, the yeast won’t die.  Assuming it’s a yeast issue and not an infection.

So I guess I have to drink 4 gallons of 9% dark beer with my wife yelling at me about it filling up the fridge then lol… I think the cooling is helping alot I maybe actually have one of the vented bottles down to being pourable going to try here in about 15 minutes.

The yeast will at least go dormant in the fridge right?

Well I opened one. It sat there, hissed gently, and dribbled for about 60 seconds until it eventually settled…  I got the whole bottle into the glass that way. Almost none of the carbonation is in solution so hopefully once it cools down and finds its way into the beer… This will resolve somewhat… I don’t know I will keep updating for historical purposes of nothing else… If anyone has any other information to add I am happy to hear it.

It’s smooth and peanut buttery almost creamy because of the excessive amount of PB I put in it I think… It’s crisp and clean tasting no off flavors… The carbonation does seem like it’s in some sort of intermediate process where it’s in the bottle and not the beer the beer is not flat after that venting process but it tastes under carbonated, young I guess…

Overall it’s not sour or soapy or any sort of unusual… It taste like every other higher ABV stout I have ever had with a hefty peanut butter cup taste.

My initial guess is a contamination issue within the bottles.  My second guess is the method you used to measure FG.  Perhaps the batch wasn’t finished fermenting and you got an erroneous FG reading.

I googled the nutrition facts for PB2 and it shows 2 g sugar per 13 g serving, so two pounds would add about 5 oz of sugar.

Homebrewer terminology here is a misnomer: if you want to do a second fermentation, that needs to happen in the presence of yeast. When you rack to a “secondary fermenter” (which is actually a bulk aging vessel) you remove most of the yeast and adding sugar after that point can be dangerous.

I cleaned the bottles the same way I always do and it’s every bottle I can’t see that every bottle got individually infected unless it was the siphon or something. I cleaned the siphon equally as well, I am pretty clean about things.

The wasn’t finished fermenting thing is something on my mind as well but it was in the secondary longer than I have ever left any other beer in the secondary. The airlock dropped over a month before I bottled it. Total fermentation time was almost 3 months which is crazy excessive compared to the 3-4 weeks I normally ferment other beers for.

I was thinking further, I mentioned the other beer I had this happen with was also a stout and when I thought about it harder it also was the only other beer I ever tried to put PB in…

That was like the third beer I ever brewed it was a one gallon batch and I used actual Jif PB because I didn’t know any better at the time. That beer also had the same exact reaction this beer does immense foaming until about 1/3 of the bottle remained. Back then I was afraid they would explode and hurt me so I vented them all immediately and started over. It was also right around 10-14 days that I checked them… I don’t normally check my beers at 2 weeks maybe that’s some awkward “bottle fermentation” period for stouts. I don’t know.

I am not gonna back down this time though I’ll keep trying things until one pops a top then I will bow out.

I hear ya, and it’s a good train of thought but why would the yeast sit in all that sugar for 2 months without reacting then suddenly wake up in the bottle after only 2 weeks?

Also someone mentioned something about FG measurements I used a 250ml graduated cylinder and a hydrometer at room temp should of been fine…

The recipe was NB PB Cup Stout unmodified all grain.
11.75 rahr 2 row
1.63 briess chocolate malt
1 flaked oats
0.5 briess carapils
0.5 briess light roasted barley
0.5 briess caramel

Target gravity was 1.085 but I boiled some excess water off and had around 1.090.

The one modification I did make is that it said 1 lbs of PB powder but I added 2 because people said it didn’t taste like PB.

Another note by the time I was bottling the PB had become thick heavy PB just like out of the jar at the bottom of the fermenter I was careful not to disturb it. The bottles are pure black goodness no trub in them the bottoms have a bit of a transparent milky clear substance but I believe that to be the priming sugar drops having dissolved at the bottom of the bottle. All the beers I have done have the same similar cloudiness during the first few weeks of bottling. It settles eventually.

They’ve been in the fridge 5 or so hours now. The second beer I opened was after about 2 it was not improved. This third beer I popped the top off like normal, a tad bit of fizzing over the edge otherwise a nicely carbonated delicious beer. All three of these beers did get the “small purge” as in I peaked the cap open and just vented the air volume inside of the bottle out essentially.

I hope this helps some, so here goes. I currently have a peanut butter porter that was bottled and have zero issues with over foaming or carbonation. It’s a 5 gallon batch with 2 pounds of pb2 in it. I keg almost all of my beer, but a close friend of my bottles all of hers. That said, we bottled it using my friends fast washer and used her method that a post I started for her brought back great results. After a hot water rinse with the washer followed by another rinse with easy clean, she then finishes with another round with iodophor.  She used to have the same problems with bottles that you are having, and she was very reluctant to believe that it could’ve been infections. She would have trouble with entire batches like you are also. The post that I am referring to is under the kegging and bottling  section named inconsistent bottle carbonation I believe.  She tried a lot of different things but after she started doing this she has had zero problems with a single bottle. I hope this helps.

I am not sure how to post the link, but it’s on the 4th page (at least on my phone). She tried several ideas from reducing priming sugar to a full sized upright fridge without a freezer to put the beer in after two weeks to make the yeast dormant. When I relayed the information to her she said "I can’t believe it could be an infection issue, but I’ll try anything. It wasn’t with every bottle all the time and some batches didn’t have a problem, but The iodophor and washer as a combination has certainly taken care of the problem. She often starts laughing and says she isn’t sure which helped her the most, but she’s never bottling anything else without her new procedure. Good luck with yours.

One minor point - to the OP:  I would not rinse the StarSan after the StarSAN soak.  You are introducing a further chance that your water has minor contaminants.  Most sanitizers are “no rinse” for this reason.  But it doesn’t sound like contamination is the problem here - just pointing out one change in your process worth considering.  Cheers!

I’m not putting past that it could be contamination… I just am baffled that the process is followed the same for 20+ batches and only these two PB stout batches have done this. I have never had a single bottle of any other beer from any other batch except these two PB stouts be “gushers”. You would think if it was the process I would of at least made 1 bottle of IPA or standard stout, porter, something that was a gusher as well. Maybe I have minor infections in all my beers but it really only shines through in these PB stouts because of all the pounds of “unclean” ingredients added to the secondary…

I will try upping my cleaning game as suggested. I noticed back in the day 20 batches ago or so when I didn’t rinse as people said, I really felt like I could taste the star san… Not like soap directly but a filmy soap like after taste was slightly present… It went away when I started rinsing the star san out.

I might just stop using PB lol… There is a way though clearly… It’s just something I keep failing at.

Now that all the bottles are cold there is a thin white ring around the neck where the top of the fluid is. Is this a sign of infection? I figured it was just “fermentation” inside the bottle. Just like the ring at the top of the fermenter.

Anyhow… 24 hours on the fridge and I can just pop the top off like normal. The situation was “fixed” by the fridge.

Not a good thing to see.  Not necessarily an infection, but it says to me that there was more activity once bottled than you want.  My guess would be you were not at final gravity.

+1 :+1:t3:

You might be on to something. When I added pb2, it was for the last 10 minutes of boil. Maybe that was a difference also as far as sanitation and the fact it was in for peak fermentation. For what it’s worth, going that route still added a nice blend of flavor in the porter. I’m not saying that the way I did it is the perfect way to do it. It’s the first time using it. I know everyone that has tasted it was pleased with the results. I’ll certainly use it again the same way. I’m not usually one to add flavors of any kind to my beer, but this one has made me more open minded.

I’ve never experienced it personally, but much aging literature points to gushers stemming from bottled beer mashed with too little calcium added to the mash water.