Hi Everyone, Long time reader of home brew forum, first time poster. I brewed an IPA from a 1-gallon kit. Everything went well, until I made one critical mistake. After bottling (with honey for bottle conditioning), I put my beers in the fridge for 2 weeks. 2 weeks later ... Flat beer. I pulled the beer out of the fridge and into a 60 degree space for 1 week. Now... Gusher. I opened it up today and a lot of foam came out (the beer tastes pretty good). My first questions: should I be concerned about bombs? Will the gushing settle down at all in the next few weeks? Secondary question How concerned should I be about water chemistry in the next few batches? I'm only doing 1 gal batches and not sure how intense I want to get with it inititially. I plan to go to a home brew shop soon to get fresh ingredients for another IPA and also a hydrometer. Thanks in advance! Cheers
I'm guessing for batch 1 you made one of 3 mistakes... You added too much priming sugar You didn't mix your priming sugar well enough Your beer was not fully fermented prior to bottling For your second question, I'm assuming you are doing extract brewing? If that is the case, don't worry about water chemistry. Get everything down first and worry about water when you go all grain.
My guess is the yeast went to sleep and woke up hungry. I would use a bottle opener and barely crack the tops to let head pressure out. Then quickly recap. But this can be messy
There will be some who disagree, but I say use a priming calculator (here are a couple: 1 and 2) and always prime with table sugar*. It is easy to get, easy to measure out, easy to dissolve. You should be able to get very consistent results. If you want your beer to have a honey taste, give it honey during fermentation. Priming is not for flavoring; it's for carbonation**. *There is no perceptible flavor difference between table and corn sugar. **I'm sure there are people who have figured out how to prime with flavorful agents. But at least, figure out how to do it consistently the conventional way before stepping out to more complicated stuff. My 2 cents.
@mothergoose I followed the directions in the kit that instructed 2 weeks of fermentation. No measurements. A hydrometer is on my list of things to get for my 2nd batch. Thanks for the responses everyone. I'll be cracking them open and re-crimping them tonight. I just don't want any bottle bombs in a week or two
You picked the most difficult sugar to use for priming. It's easy to get unexpected results with honey. Try regular sugar next time. Don't chill the bottles until they are carbonated. This takes 2-3 weeks at 66F-70F. Longer if colder.
I wouldn't be worried about water chemistry just yet. Not having bottle bombs is wayyy more important! Get your priming sugar nailed down first, and make sure you've reached your FG before bottling. If you are just doing gallon kits, then bottled water should be fine. If you move up to 5-gal batches and don't feel like spending the extra money on jugs of ice mountain from the store, you can just use tap water treated with campden tablets (you can get a bag of 100 for like $3.99 at any LHBS). I've been doing it this way for the past 2 years and have never had any off-flavors in the final beer.
Correct me if I am wrong, but lme and dme essentially have their water chemistry handled on the mash end right?
There's your first problem...the beer needs to be @ room temp for 2 weeks after bottling. 2nd problem is you probably used too much honey, even though you can use slightly more honey than sugar for priming) ...or 3, like others said, you didn't mix well.
They have the mash pH handled. But not necessarily the flavor ions a brewer might be looking for a particular recipe/style. The problem though is since nobody knows what was in the mash water, nobody knows what to add for flavor, except by trial and error.
