I always bottle my brews and have had no problems until my last couple of batches. On these two batches which have been conditioning for a couple of months now when I pop the cap everything is normal but once I start to pour it into the glass an extraordinary amount of foam is produced. I then have to wait what seems like an age for the foam to settle before I am able to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I have no idea why these beers should be acting in this way I used my normal amount of priming sugar (1 cup DME ), the gravity readings were consistent for several readings ( both beers were in the primary for 2 weeks and secondary for 4 and 5 weeks) and my sanitation was exactly the same as it has been for all my previous beers. Does anyone have any ideas as to were I have gone wrong so I can avoid this problem on future brews?
You’ve probably already thought of this, but maybe it’s your glassware? Is it “beer clean?”
Nucleation sites on glass ware really can cause foaming (especially if it is fine in the bottle and then foams up big time when you pour.)
Despite the temperature difference warm clean glasses seem to produce less foam for me than cold glasses covered with ice crystals.
Hmmmm, I have started decanting the beer into a plastic jug prior to pouring into glasses, maybe it is the plastic? I would not have thought that the serving ware would have produced the vast amount of foam I am seeing?
It depends on the plastic, but most cheap plastics (e.g., your plastic jug) have a coarser texture than glass. And they certainly would scratch more easily when you clean them–those scratches serve as nucleation sites.