Thursday, July 21, 2005
Paradiso e Inferno
Well, after a one year hiatus, I decided to get back on the homebrewing saddle. I wanted a quick and simple recipe mostly for time convienence, but also something that would be ready to drink for a hot summer day. I chose this no nonsense Honey Wheat recipe.
OG for the recipe says 1.040, mine ended up being something like 1.062! Primary fermentation was normal. FG read at 1.010, not too far off the mark. No secondary fermentation, primed with 3/4 cup corn sugar.
About 10 days into bottling, took a sneek peak at how it was doing. Chilled one in the fridge for a bit, popped the top and bang! WAY too much head. Over carbonation to say the least. It was a nice pillowy white head, but it was clearly taking up half the glass. I also noticed the outside of the bottle was slightly sticky, and smelled of homebrew even before I opened it.
Went back to the basement, checked the box. One of the bottles had already shattered and soaked the cardboard box. How did I miss that?
For safety's sake, purged and dumped the rest of the batch. Several bottles are even more explosive then the one I sampled. No idea how this happened. I checked BeerTools recipe calculator, the recipe was written correctly. Maybe it was the summer heat? I don't know. I'm disappointed of course. Hate to dump beer down the sink. Looks like it's back to the drawing board.
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Welcome back to the craft... Could have been a number of different issues, such as wild yeast from the honey, a bad hydrometer reading and the beer wasn't ready, a gusher bug from contaminated bottles - but its all kind of conjecture.
Poured them down the sink? oh the horror... I had some that were over carbonated and I just bled the pressure off them for about 2 weeks straight... every night I'd take a church key and barely apply pressure to the cap... when the pressure was bled off (or foam reached the top), I'd stop and move on to the next one.
Hope you stick with it and brew another batch soon - gotta get back on that horse!!!
Poured them down the sink? oh the horror... I had some that were over carbonated and I just bled the pressure off them for about 2 weeks straight... every night I'd take a church key and barely apply pressure to the cap... when the pressure was bled off (or foam reached the top), I'd stop and move on to the next one.
Hope you stick with it and brew another batch soon - gotta get back on that horse!!!
These were pretty bad. I did that "bleed" trick to one bottle, I got soaked. After it died down, there was barely half a bottle left of beer. You know those 1 liter swing top bottles? It even busted the bottom out of one of those.
I figured trying to save the brew was not as important as saving my hand from getting stiches.
And don't worry, I'm too thirsty not to brew again!
I figured trying to save the brew was not as important as saving my hand from getting stiches.
And don't worry, I'm too thirsty not to brew again!
Just curious but did you chill the beer down before you tried to "bleed" the pressure?
# posted by 
: 4:41 PM
: 4:41 PM
Well, the first one I tried - I put in the fridge for while then just opened it - with the intent on drinking it. It ended up being at least half a glass of foam. The rest of them were basement room temp when I purged them. They foamed a lot more. I got drenched. With the cap completely off, it spouted up several inches. I prob could have chilled them and bled them slowly....
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