Sometimes if I open a beer straight from the cellar it will foam, I have grown accustomed to it so I am ready. I figure it has something to do with the temperature but I don’t really know since it does not happen to all beers. ABV does not seem to matter, but it only does it from bottles.
I bought some Goose Island Matilda and it is foaming whether I take it from the cellar or fridge. It is starting to get annoying enough that I won’t buy it anymore (only three more four packs to go).
That is an interesting thought, Bud. I looked into it and while it could make the Matilda do it, I don’t think it is the cause of my other beers doing it because the issue goes away when I put them in the fridge.
What’s the temperature in your cellar? It sounds to me like your cellar may be too warm. CO2 is more soluble in colder liquids, so a beer at 41 degrees with 2.4 volumes of CO2 will be at 10PSI. That same beer at 68 degrees will be at 17PSI, and will likely gush when opened. The other possible issue is infection. Very few craft beers are sterile filtered, so there is a chance for some random bug to multiply in your beer, particularly at warmer temperatures. A lot of brett-type organisms get much more active at around 68-70 degrees.
Sounds like the Matilda was bottle conditioned and is over carbonated. If I remember correctly, Belgain styles are typically highly carbonated. So, sounds like GI was on the wrong end in that they used too much priming yeast and or priming sugar, assuming the batch was done fermenting to begin with.
If you open a beer can or bottle of say IPA at room temperature vs 40 degrees, you’ll see the basics of carbonation. The colder a beer is , the more CO2 it can hold in suspension. The warmer it gets, you’ll see it escape, upon opening.
The other explanation in getting a gusher is infection.
The main part of the cellar is 55F but where the beer is, it is 58F. When I built the cellar, I realized the area under the stairs was a void so I expanded there for more storage. The cooling unit is properly sized for the whole space but the air does not flow to the area under the stairs very well, thus the difference.
The foaming of the Matilda is probably an infection as a couple of you have stated since it does it whether it is in the cellar or fridge. Is it ok to consume?
Other beers that foam from the cellar and not the fridge I will put down to the temp being too high for them. But I do love a good Belgian triple or quad straight from the cellar.
I’ve seen this on occasion, too. Just a month or two ago we had a case of a Deschutes seasonal IPA variant that would foam over right out of the fridge. I used to have this problem home brewing if I put in too much sugar for bottle conditioning so I’ve always assumed the problem was too much CO2. That could be from an issue on the bottling line or some kind of secondary fermentation.