Beer Forum

I've been homebrewing extract beer for about a year now, right around 15 batches or so. First time I have had a bottle overcarbed.

I'm using Best Beer kits and using the 5oz priming sugar in the kit. Boil, cool, put in priming bucket, then siphon beer on top and stir for a minute to work it around. I bottle condition warm (68) for 2 weeks, then pack an empty 6pk carrier and cool them in the fridge. The rest are left at room temp (68). When I drink 3 beers, I replace them with warm bottles and chill those while I'm drinking the other cold 3 in the 6pack.

When I opened this bottle I'm talking about, half of it went out of the bottle as foam. Batch was brewed December 23, IIRC, fermented 2 weeks, conditioned 2 weeks, then started drinking. I'm a little better than halfway through the first case.

It's a dunkelweizen fermented with WLP300. I'm going to open another bottle tonight and see what happens. Does the hefeweizen yeast still keep chewing away this long during bottle conditioning? I get shitty attenuation from this kit, but it's a great session beer. OG was 1.050 and FG was 1.022, same as it was the last four times I brewed this kit. This is the only time this has happened. The only change I made was using WLP300 instead of Danstar Munich dry yeast.

I haven't brewed this style myself, but isn't 1.022 high for a FG of a 1.050 OG beer?

Perhaps it wasn't really done fermenting, and the ferment continued in the bottle?

The only weizen I've done was an all extract bavarian hefe, with WLP300. I found that the ferment slowed quite a bit but the gravity was still high, and I needed to try to rouse the yeast a couple times to get it back into suspension. I think it ended up finishing at 1.018.

No, that's all it attenuates down to. 6.6lbs of extract and a pound of maltodextrin. Four batches of the same kit yielded the same results every time. The kit says it should get down to 1.12-1.015 but that's never happened. I question the fermentability of the extract.

Also with the same OG and FG in the four other batches of this exact kit I didn't have problems with overcarbonation. Only with this batch and only a few bottles so far.

This could be caused by an infected bottle and may only be isolated to that one bottle. Bacteria introduced at bottling on the cap or on that one bottle to infect the bottle and continue to ferment residual sugars normally unfermentable to brewers yeast. Thus causing a gusher. If the other bottles are ok then you are in good shape. If all bottles are overcarbed the batch could have gotten infected at bottling. It may be tasting fine given the flavors thrown off by that yeast.

Wow- 6.6 lbs of wheat extract PLUS a whole lb of maltodextrin? Seems excessive to me.
I'd skip the maltodextrin. Wheat extract contains PLENTY of dextrins by itself.

A decent weissbier recipe is 6.6 lbs of wheat extract and an oz of halleratur at 60, with wyeast 3068 for a German Weizen. Use the American Wheat yeast or 001/1056/05 for an American wheat.

That's all you need.

As far as the over carbonation, it could be an infection. Leave a botttle out very warm (near a heater vent -- let it get up to about 80) for 2 weeks. If it's infected, it too will gush and you will taste the sourness/funk. (I'd consider putting it in a garbage bag to help if the bottle turns into a grenade). Otherwise, if the taste is normal, it's just the unfermentables.

HTH-

Could be infected, but didn't taste any different than the others. I've got a pretty solid sanitization routine, but stuff does happen.

This was the recipe kit I made:

http://www.brewersbestkits.com/pdf/1029 ... weizen.pdf

It had a half ounce of Cascade and a quarter ounce of Willamette, which I kept out and substituted 1 ounce of German Hallertau for 60 minutes (no other additions). I also held off the Danstar Munich yeast and pitched one vial of WLP300 (same strain as Wyeast 3068). The maltodextrin adds body as an unfermentable as I understand. I add one can (3.3lbs) at boil and the other can 15 minutes from flameout.

I was really reluctant to add the maltodextrin as the last times it didn't attenuate close enough to the goal per the recipe sheet. Wonder if the yeast are getting turned off by the maltodextrin and stopping early. I'm going to call the co-op and have them hold another kit for me until I get paid Friday. I'll brew it again using the same hops and yeast but this time leaving out the maltodextrin and see what happens.

This dunkelweizen tastes good and the really low alcohol makes it a great lunch beer. Rough calculations (1.050-1.022) make it a 3.7% ABV beer. I'd like it thinner like a dunkelweizen should be, but the maltodextrin is what gets me to that starting gravity.