Carbonation Qualms

Well its a Saison and thus typically "Effervescent". Its pretty hard to judge how each bottle will develop when you bottle condition (like a good Belgian should be) Ive had several bottle of the same batch of beer that were at different levels of carbonation.So 2.3-2.9 volumes pretty big swing in range, personally i wouldn't de-gas, chill it and pour slower and enjoy the spritzy lacey goodness.

 

Not to threadjack, but what about the opposite as well? What if you have bottles that are flatter than a coked out Lohan?

 

Schneider Weisse Hopfenweiss is amazing, but it poured out kinda "flat" for a German Weizen

 

i've yet to have an over-carbonated beer, BUT my palate is built on a foundation of drinking Coke/Diet Coke-type drinks growing up. typical american, i guess.

but my point is maybe some beers have so much carbonation because the world is full of drinkers like me: those who can't be carbonated-out.

(yes, I LOVE Belgian dubbels ... bubbles and bubbles for days!)

 

Bottle conditioning is an inexact science. When a style calls for high carbonation, you have to add/leave a fair amount of sugar in solution in order to produce enough carbonation. The longer the beer sits, the more sugar the yeast will eat, and the more CO2 it will fart out. It's possible that brewers shoot for the very high end of the range, as nothing kills a traditional style more than it being too flat. So over time, you get lots of carbonation. And unlike American brewers who use heavy bottles to try and rip us off, European brewers use them because they have to to contain the pressure of their highly carbed beers.

De Dolle is notorious for very highly carbed beers. I stopped buying their export stout because it is just too frustrating, and often gushes, but there must be a good reason for it. My guess is that they'd rather sell over-carbed beer than under-carbed beer, because as you note, overcarbed beer eventually dies down. There's no cure for an under-carbed beer.

 

Don't underestimate serving temp as well in comparison to the vessel your pouring into. I doubt you are, but if you're serving the beer too warm, excessive foaming can happen - esp with a style with a significant amount of carb. May not be the case in this particular instance, just an FYI.

 

I've had this issue multiple times with St. Bernardus. Not sure why.

 

Like kdb150 mentioned above, bottle conditioning is an inexact science. If a beer is bottled too early, i.e. before fermentation is complete, or if too much sugar is added at the time of bottling, then over-carbonation will result. If both scenarios occur, then you've got definite gushers.

 

I'd also like to mention that carbonation, or lack thereof, also seems to differ from culture to culture. Same with head generation/retention. I love it when people think that high ABV beers can never generate a decent head. As much as I love big American imperial stouts, the total lack of head just kinda puts me off.

 

If you 'drizzel pour' you can put a head on almost any beer. Retention, however, is not guaranteed.

 

I had this happen with a Podge stout a while back. As soon as I opened the bottle it starting foaming. I set it in the sink to settle down and by the time it did about 1/2 of the bottle was gone, maybe more. Also encountered this with Jester King Black Metal not long ago

 

there is alot of misinformation and misunderstanding here, so to set things straight...

no. in reality, a sophisticated brewery is able to determine the the dissolved CO2 content in beer to well below ppm. if they have a good yeast management program the brewer will be able to determine the correct priming addition and the final CO2 very accurately. it is only an inexact science if the brewer is not sophisticated, unable or unaware. any decent homebrewer can bottle condition with a high degree of success. it is not a guessing game, even without the benefit of a lab. remember that a commercial brewers variables are controlable. yeast is the greatest mystery, but these breweries pride themselves on having well tamed yeast.

this is true to a point, and that point is when the yeast have consumed all of the available priming sugar and then go dormant. a beer can only be fully bottle conditioned once. beer will only become overcarbonated if there was too much priming sugar to begin with. a fully conditioned beer can be had in a week or weeks. it does not become any more carbonated over months or years (unless infected or has brett for example). a brewery would not intentionally release a beer that has not been fully conditioned with the expectation that the buyer will finish the conditioning over the course of days or weeks.

american brewers are spending the extra money for heavy bottles, shipping the useless heavy bottles... because they want to screw the customer?

and the traditional style needs to have high carbonation for it to be, uh, traditional?
whatever.

i think shaking a warm bottle is the problem. dont shake your beer bottle and don't open warm bottles. pretty sure anyway.
Cheers.

 

I have gotten overly gassed beers from two major craft brewers. In the one instance, I called the Quality Manager and asked why. The answer was simple. The beer accidentally went through a 2nd fermentation because it was exposed to bacteria/yeast that shouldn't have been there. In this instance, the brewer sent me a fresh batch of beer and other goodies for my call. Pays to be honest!

 

Well-tamed yeast? You are aware that traditional Belgian lambics are brewed with 100% wild yeast, right? You go leave wort up in an attic in a shallow vat, and wait a few days or weeks, and then tell me if you know exactly how attenuative the yeast is. Sorry, but you are the one who is misinformed. Not every beer is a straightforward boil-pitch-ferment-sugar-bottle process. Many traditional brewers in Europe don't add sugar for bottle conditioning, they bottle the beer during active fermentation. All of this adds some variables into the equation. Even if you aren't doing a traditional wild fermentation, any wild yeast is unpredictable to some extent.

Summary - wild yeast is unpredictable. Many highly carbed styles use wild yeast, some exclusively. This isn't as easy to predict as you make it out to be.

Again, a traditional gueuze continues fermentation for years in the bottle. And traditional gueuzes do NOT use priming sugar. These beers actually do continue a slow fermentation in the bottle for many years, which necessarily increases the amount of CO2 in the beer. It takes a very, very long time for the yeast to go dormant in gueuzes and traditional saisons. Are you aware that some gueuzes have best buy dates of 20 years from bottling? That is because yeast autolysis doesn't happen until then. The yeast in these beers are very much alive for long periods of time.

I think you have a lot to learn about how beer is made in other parts of the world.

 

You are talking about a saison which, as far as I know, is brewed the traditional way with a wild-ish saison yeast, by people who probably do not have the means to monitor fermentation or sugar content by means of laboratory equipment, and likely bottle without using priming sugar. I have a hard time buying that they could always nail a carbonation level. I also know that a saison is also cellarable for long periods of time, and also typically continues fermentation in the bottle for years, and does NOT finish up in a few weeks like Billandsudz claimed above.

You don't have to use brett or be infected to have carbonation continue in the bottle. It's a characteristic of the yeast that they use. You asked why some bottle-conditioned beers are over-carbonated, and I told you - it's primarily due to the fact that active fermentation goes on in the bottle for a long time in some styles, including the one you asked about.