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foaming bottles

S

Shakey_Dog

In my last 2 batches I have had just a few bottles foam all over the place.  Not the entire batch or half just a few.

I have never had this happen before :mad:

Does anybody have any ideas?  ???

Don
 
Don--I had one of these on my last batch, and I determined that it was because it was the very last bottle I filled. Why would this mean anything? Well, I think that I've not been getting a good blending of the primer solution with the fermented wort at bottling time. I usually dump the primer into the bottling bucket, and rack the beer on top of it. The theory is that the primer and beer will mix throughout the course of the racking. Nice theory, but I'm not sure that it's working completely.

What I've been trying to do lately is get every last drop of beer out of the bottling bucket, so I'll sometimes use a funnel to fill the last bottle or two. I know I may be introducing oxygen and what not, but I mark these bottles with a big "X" and drink them first--I just use them as testers to see how carbonation is coming along. Last week, one of my "X" bottles from a wheat batch gushed all over the place.  I thought maybe it was an infection, but when I tasted the beer, it was incredibly sweet. I think what happened is that there was a high concentration of primer in the bottom of the bucket, and that's basically what I bottled. Check to see if the bottles that are foaming up come toward the end of your bottling operation. High primer concentrations may be the culprit. If they're not from the end of bottling--

--then you may have intermittently dirty bottles. I had issues with inconsistent carbonation, foaming, and other not-nice things for awhile back in my early days of bottling. When done with a bottle, I would simply rinse it out until it was time to refill it. One day, I took a look at a bottle that had cause foaming, and I saw a film and millions of specks of "stuff" all over the inside of the bottle. I then saw this on dozens of other bottles. What I do now is power clean my bottles, using this:

drill_brush.jpg


I cut the ring handle off a bottle brush, trimmed a piece of tubing to cover the handle, and tightened it into the chuck of my drill. Now, I save up a couple dozen bottles and have a marathon bottle cleaning session. Some say that I'm going overboard, but I haven't had any problems with off-flavors or foaming or weird carbonation since. I guess I just don't understand why some would go through all the time and trouble of carefully making a batch of beer, but then won't spend a few moments to make sure the finished product is packaged properly. That's just me, though.

At any rate, hope that gives you some ideas. Good luck!

colin
 
Heavy duty stuff Colin :eek:

What you described is what I have found.  I just got lazy with a few bottles the last few batches.  I may try the drill thing.  Another toy is always good :D

Don
 
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