Foam Issue Options

[mach5]

I'm scratching my head over this one. Me and my buddy brewed a batch of winter warmer. We split the batch and he took half and I took the other half, we fermented separately. We both primaried a couple weeks then racked to secondary and let it sit for a couple months. Then his half went to bottles and my half stayed kegged, and we both added some spices to the brew...cinnamon, cardamom, clove and nutmeg.

Well, my buddy gave me a bottle of his brew to try...he was concerned that he overdid the spices at the end. I tried the beer and it was good, but there was an overcarb issue. When I opened the bottle, it didn't gush, but there was plenty of carb when I poured, and most of the pour was foam. But the beer was really good.

Now, on to my issue. My beer had been sitting in a keg secondary for months. I went to add the spices and the thing was under some CRAZY pressure. I went to open the relief valve and got a beer shower...I was like, ########, this has been sitting for months I expect it to be flat? The lid was under so much pressure I couldn't get it off. The only way to get to the beer was to unscrew the relief valve and get the lid off as quick as possible...foam oozed out the keg opening. So I threw the spices in the beer, got a quick sample, then closed it up.

I had two initial thoughts...one was that the primary was not over when I racked and I got fermentation going on in the secondary (I later discredited this theory). The next thought was contamination, but when I tried the beer, it tasted great...awesome in fact.

Fast forward to last evening...it had been spiced for a week, so I went to rack off the spices to another keg. Same problem. The thing was jacked with pressure and I could hardly get the lid off. So, I opened the thing, racked to a new keg as fast as I could...lost about 2-3 pints on the floor from the foaming out the top. Strangely, no yeast cake in the bottom of the keg to suggest any kind of fermentation going on in the secondary. Beer still tastes great, no sourness or off flavors at all.

Back to my buddies beer...he now has bulging bottle caps. I told him to chill it ASAP, move it to a cooler of ice water outside in case there are any bombs. I think he is going to try to uncap, let the bottles sit a little then recap to relieve the pressure. My thoughts are that he just used to much priming sugar...I think he used molasses to prime, but I don't know how much.

So, any ideas as to what's going on here, at least with my kegged beer. Help, thoughts, theories?

[Highlander]

What was the OG, and the gravities when you racked/checked each time. That should tell you if fermentation was still going. It will only take a couple of gravity points to build up a lot of pressure, and the amount of pressure will be dependent upon the air space. If it was carbonated when you last racked, it will still have had entrained carbonation when you put it into the new barrel, and even if it had finished fermenting, the entrained carbonation would be enough to pressurize the barrel.

[mach5]

Uh, yeah...about those gravity readings...don't remember what they were but I did take them. I think this beer started around 1.080. Well, I was thinking that maybe I filled my keg REALLY full when I racked...so not a lot of head space. But, I did open the keg to check the beer at one point during aging and don't remember having any pressurization issues. I just opened and looked to make sure nothing was growing in there then closed it back up.

Again, almost no yeast sediment in the keg tells me there couldn't have been fermentation going on and the beer seemed pretty clear also. I usually get some amount of sediment.

This morning I went into the basement and pulled the relief and got a little psst. So there was some pressure. I'm going to check again this evening. I didn't want to put it under CO2 and leave for work not knowing what could happen. So, I'm going to pressurize it this weekend and keep a close watch on it.

[jwatkins56550]

probably some stupid questions but: Did you transfer to a keg and not put any pressure on it? How did you add the spices? My guess is you got something in there, maybe from adding the spices. What is the gravity of the beer now?

[malkore]

i think the fact its foaming so bad is suspending the yeast, thus no yeast cake.

cold crash it over the weekend/holiday and then draw a pint...i bet its yeasty. i suspect it wasn't done fermenting.

[MixnMatchBrew]

You don't need to rack from the lid. You can just jumper your keg and let the pressure push from out post to the other out post.

To ensure you don't add any oxygen you fill your target keg with sanitizer and push it to another empty keg with c02. Then fill the target keg with your beer. Or you can just push the sanitizer back to a bucket to store it for another session (if using starsan)

My vote is it was not done fermenting. It does not really take much fermentation to carbonate the beer. In that big a beer the yeast will slowly keep working if they were not done in the primary.

This post has been edited by MixnMatchBrew: Nov 21 2009, 08:47 AM