What the hell man?! (Over-carbonated beer)

If where you bought it from is someplace you frequent a lot and have a good relationship with, definitely take it back. A good owner is going to want to keep his customers happy. If it was just a stop by place, suck it up and consider it a loss.

 

Count yourself lucky it was only a $7 loss. I had a bottle of Even More Jesus do this to me. I had enjoyed it so much I went back and got a second bottle, chilled it for the weekend and then this.

 

You guys should really stop shaking your beers before you open them.

 

Looking at the state of that basement/cell, I wouldn't doubt that!

 

If it ain't bottle conditioned. Sometimes it happens cos the beer is left with the head pressure up too high, or it actually creeps up and it takes a day or two to realize that and that's about the time its up for packaging and you stare at the Zahm and then each other in the brewery and go. "It's a screamer with about 2.78 vols. Shit." And the day of packaging hell begins cos it's really hard to undo these things without compromising the beer and you will have massive foam issues all day.

 

The imagery of the first post made me laugh. Mostly because I pictured foam coming out of OP's nose and ears. Sorry for your loss though, OP, hopefully you can get a refund but if not, $7 hopefully will not be terribly missed.

 

I had a bottle conditioned ipa yesterday and had the same problem

 

Is it bottle conditioned? Here in QC a lot of beers are Belgian styles and this happens to me quite a bit (usually with breweries that are newer or have less experience/volume--or at least that is the least common denominator I have seen). I always figured it was either sloppiness on the sugar that goes in the bottle or it was either too soon or too late to be opening it for best results.

Sure, it is annoying, but I have found that usually the beers still taste okay. A lesson in patience...

 

Did it smell or taste infected?

 

Brother! I was scanning through the thread just to see if anyone happened to mention Adam, as I had the exact same thing happen a while back! Looked exactly like your pics, and at that level of foam, it was nigh undrinkable. Was really excited to try it, but after that experience, not sure I'd go back for more.

 

Sometimes breweries get issues with their force carbonators, too (not just bottle conditioned) - i had a 6'er refunded + a t-shirt by a brewery in kentucky a while back that thought they'd captured all of the over-carbonated bottles before they left the warehouse. just shoot 'em an email, be courteous, and hope for the best.

 

Whenever I had a problem with a beer (craft or macro) I've always written the brewery.
They usually can't send you replacement beer but they will send either coupons or beer swag (equal to or greater than the original purchase price of the beer).
Cheers!

 

To much carbonation, it happens from time to time and yes it is a pain in the ass and can make drinking the beer almost impossible. Bring them back...it's the breweries fault. A local brewery that I frequent had the same problem with an entire batch of killer DIPA and had to pull them all off the shelves because they were so bad. Was not a good day for beer but it needed to be done.

 

We had this happen at my brewery. It happened on several batches over the course of a year, and there were actually multiple reasons why it happened at the time. At first, we were under pitching our yeast. The beer would appear to be fully fermented, but then after bottling it would ferment further in the bottle. Typically, it would be 5-6 weeks later if it was sitting warm and it would be over carbonated to the point that nothing would pour but foam. This is far more common for breweries than contaminations that cause over carbonation.

Another thing that we had happen was when we got a "pure" yeast culture from our yeast supplier, we had a contamination with a seperate sub-species of yeast (diastaticus) and it fermented further in the bottle as well.

Since the time of our issues, we have changed a lot of our procedures. We did not count yeast cells previously, but rather, we pitched based on volume. We let the beer sit for an additional 3 days after reaching terminal gravity to ensure complete attenuation and we changed our yeast supplier to Wyeast. We previously used a smaller, newer, and lesser known lab which also gave problems to another brewery in town.

 

It took only 9 posts until "infection" was brought up. New record?

 

somehow I managed to be at the grand opening of goose island brewery way back when. All their kegs were over carbonated and poured almost all foam. Imagine your grand opening and you can't even serve a glass of beer. It was still a great event, but the beer was a disaster. (my first ever post on BA by the way, JOY!)

 

Tripel Karmeliet was the worst over carbonated beer I've ever had.

 

Very glad to hear you recouped the loss (and then some!) It sounds like that shop has a new loyal customer. I would suggest also contacting the brewery, not in an attempt to double up your recompense (you may even mention that your shop refunded you already), but so that they are aware of the issue; odds are the bottle shop took it as an internal customer service issue and would not have alerted their distributor or the brewery, but the brewery will still want to know.

 

Jeez and I thought every bottle of Duvel I've ever had was a tough pour.