CHAPTER SIX
PACKAGING
Packaging is a necessary and complicated process that allows brewers to actually enjoy the product that they worked so diligently to create. It can also be the bane of a brewer’s life.
Bottles can be finicky and difficult to clean and sanitize. Capping can be a tricky process for a range of different bottles. There is a risk from broken glass, and the process of recarbonating in the bottle to create CO2 can be dangerous if not done correctly. Bottling can also generally be a messy process.
On the other hand, kegging is often much easier than bottling, though it can be an expensive prospect. The high cost of kegs and CO2 cylinders, and the necessary serving equipment—a kegerator or keezer—to then drink the beverage can be a barrier to this step. Simplifying the process of packaging can be complicated.
Problems in packaging are often due to cleanliness or pressure problems (or both), and at this stage in the process a small mistake can mean the difference between spending an afternoon enjoying a batch of beer or frustratingly opening and dumping bottles.
56 | My beer gradually becomes sour in bottles |
CAUSE
The beer has a lactobacillus infection. Lactobacillus is a genus of gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria that can eat the sugar that is left after fermentation, creating lactic acid, which tastes sour
SOLUTION
A lactobacillus infection in the bottle is discouraging and, once infected, there’s no way to recover beer that’s been soured. However, you can examine your process to determine where the infection may have occurred in order to mitigate it in the future.
First, is the problem present in some bottles or all bottles? If it is only in some bottles, then chances are the bottles in question were not sufficiently cleaned and sanitized.
If the problem is in all the bottles, then tracing back the route of the beer can help find the issue. Check the bottling apparatus and any hoses. Are there any dead spots where there might be leftover beer, or sticky spots where bacteria could grow? Were they properly cleaned and sanitized before use? During the bottling session, did anything come in contact with the bottling tip that wasn’t beer or the bottle that was being filled?
Check the bottling bucket or vessel. Are there scratches or cracks inside that might harbor bacteria? Was the vessel properly cleaned and sanitized before beer was introduced? Did anything else come in contact with the beer before it went into the bottles? Did you take a sample out to measure gravity? Was the vessel you sampled with sanitized before touching the beer? Work backwards from the point where the infection is discovered and investigate each piece of equipment and action. In a worst-case scenario, you may need to replace any soft plastic or rubber parts if they cannot be properly cleaned and sanitized.
Brewers sometimes intentionally use lactobacillus to acidify beer for certain sour styles, but if your beers are gradually souring in the bottle unintentionally it’s a sign of an infection.
57 | My bottled beer is all flat |
CAUSE
If beer has been bottled using priming sugar to ferment and create carbonation in the bottle, there has been a fermentation issue. Alternatively, seals on the bottle caps are faulty.
SOLUTION
Was the correct amount of priming sugar used? Different types of sugar require different dosing rates. An easy rule of thumb for dextrose is half a cup per five gallons. Charts and calculators are available to help determine the amount of sugar you need, and sugar tablets are available for easy measuring. It is possible to dose each bottle with sugar, but be careful not to put too much in, or you may over-carbonate the beer instead.
Are the bottles at room temperature? Bottle conditioning requires refermentation in the bottle. Bottles must be kept at a good fermentation temperature. If bottles are kept cool or cold, yeast may be dormant. Keep the bottles at room temperature for a period of time and they should carbonate.
Has enough time passed? Because there are so few yeast cells present in finished, clear beer, bottle conditioning can take weeks, particularly in a high-alcohol beer. Give the beer a couple more weeks to see if carbonation forms, before giving up.
If none of those are the issue, or the bottles were filled from an already fermented beer (out of a keg), check the seal of the crown caps. Caps should fit snugly around the top of each bottle without being over-tight.
If you can pop a cap off with your thumb, rather than an opener, or if you tip a bottle on its side and beer leaks out, you don’t have a good seal. Consider recapping the beers and waiting a few more weeks.
The proper fill levels in bottled beer are about halfway up the neck of the bottle. If the fill level is too low or too high, you may experience problems.
58 | My bottle has a chip in the rim |
CAUSE
A bottle has a small chip missing out of the rim, either as a manufacturing defect or as a result of handling while reusing bottles.
SOLUTION
Under no circumstances should you use a bottle with a chip missing from the rim. Chipped glass can be indicative of other problems, including a weakness in the glass that means the bottle won’t keep pressure without risk of exploding. Or, the chip may not allow the bottle cap to seal correctly, meaning the beer won’t carbonate, and you have an additional risk of infection.
If you’ve bought new bottles, discard (recycle) the bottle with the chip in the rim immediately and take care to rinse the rest of the bottles well to be sure that there are no glass shards present in any of the bottles. If it is a bottle that you’ve reused before, it may be a good idea to examine or assess the bottle got damaged. For example, did it happen when being uncapped, or when it was soaking for cleaning?
The most common time that bottle rims are chipped is when they are being turned upside down and stored. Check your local homebrew supply store for a bottle tree. Bottle trees are cylinders with “branches” sticking off of them that allow bottles to hang on them with the neck facing down, so that bottles will drain naturally. They are an excellent way to keep freshly washed bottles in a way that will stop any debris from falling inside the neck.
Remember to sanitize each bottle before filling on bottling day.
59 | My bottle caps are rusty |
CAUSE
Bottle caps have been stored wet or in a moist environment. Rusty bottle caps can leave a layer of rust on the lip of the bottle, and may not form an appropriate seal for carbonation.
SOLUTION
Under no circumstances should you use rusty bottle caps for bottling beer.
If the caps on your bottled beer have rusted, investigate your storage environment for excessive moisture. Be sure to wipe any residual rust from the bottle before drinking. While consuming rust isn’t dangerous in and of itself, it can contribute undesirable flavors to your beer.
The main contributor to rusty bottle caps is returning bottle caps to closed storage after sanitizing on a bottling day, when more bottle caps have been sanitized than actually used. While it is an excellent idea to have more bottle caps than needed to account for any mistakes, drops, or damage that may occur during the bottling process, it’s a good idea to fully dry bottle caps before moving them into a closed bag, box, or other storage container. It’s most efficient to lay them out in a single layer, crown side up, on a paper towel in a dry, warm place.
Be sure to resanitize all caps immediately prior to their next use.
60 | There is a lot of yeast in the bottom of my bottles |
CAUSE
Beer was bottled before yeast dropped out of solution, or yeast was roused as the beer was transferred into the bottling bucket.
SOLUTION
While it’s necessary for there to be some yeast in solution for bottle conditioning to occur, it does not have to be visible to the human eye. If fermentation has finished and the beer still appears cloudy, it is worth spending a few extra days to allow the yeast to drop out of solution before bottling.
If fermentation is complete, you’ve been waiting, and the beer is still cloudy, check to make sure the beer is not infected with bacteria by tasting some. If it tastes fine, consider adding a post-fermentation fining agent and mixing it in. Liquid fining agents, such as gelatin or silicic acid, can aid in clarification by helping yeast cells and proteins stick together in the solution, thereby dropping out through gravity. Just be sure that all of the tools you use are cleaned and sanitized before introduction into the finished beer.
If you are able, transfer via siphon rather than pouring the beer from one vessel to another. Siphons can create a gentle, slow transfer that allows the brewer to leave sediment behind while transferring nothing but the clearest liquid. In addition, it prevents the excessive introduction of oxygen to the beer, thereby avoiding staling compounds that derive from oxidation.
A cloudy bottled beer could be caused by yeast that escaped the fermenter, or it could be signs of a bacterial infection.
61 | My bottles have ropy filaments in them |
CAUSE
The beer has a pediococcus infection. Pediococcus is a gram-positive cocci-shaped (spherical) bacteria that can eat residual sugar in the beer creating lactic acid and diacetyl off-flavors, as well as slimy, ropy filaments.
SOLUTION
A pediococcus infection is considered one of the most difficult infections to clean out of a professional brewery, much less a home brewery. Similar to a lactobacillus infection (see Problem 56), it’s best to start at the end product, and work backwards to investigate cleanliness at each step of the process.
However, to be safest, you should simply replace any soft, scratchable, or porous material that you can’t effectively soak or access the inside of. Hoses, bottling wands, any gaskets in your operation, even a plastic racking cane may be the source of a potential infection.
Take all remaining pieces apart and thoroughly clean each (bear in mind that plate heat exchangers can be incredibly difficult to put back together!), scrubbing each part. Pay close attention to any cracks, crevices, or seams, and scrub closely to disrupt any possible biofilm that may have formed. Use a caustic cleaner on all parts. Be sure that the caustic is as hot as you can get it, then follow this with a cold sanitation rinse. Allow each part to completely air-dry. Sanitize again before use.
Finally, review your cleaning and sanitation procedures before your next brew to be sure you avoid this infection in the future.
Pellicles are signs of wild yeast or bacterial infections in your beer and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
62 | There’s a ring around the beer line in my bottle. |
CAUSE
The beer has an infection of bacteria or wild yeast or, rarely, there is a mini “krausen” ring from refermentation in the bottle that sometimes results from using dry malt extract or some unrefined sugars.
SOLUTION
A ring around the inside of the bottle is almost definitely a sign of some sort of infection. A white film across the top of the beer in the neck of the bottle is a sure sign that the ring derives from an infection rather than anything else and should be treated as such. Wild yeast is often a little less tricky to remove than bacteria—after all, you remove yeast from your equipment on a regular basis—but without knowing the exact kind or source, it’s worth treating every infection as a Worst Possible Scenario (see Problems 56 and 61).
In some rare cases, the refermentation used for bottle carbonation can create a mini krausen ring inside the neck of the bottle. Exercise caution if you think this may be the case, as a fermentation robust enough to leave a krausen ring is likely also enough to create a significant amount of CO2 within the package and may lead to a bottle that is under an extraordinary amount of pressure. There was almost definitely too much priming sugar, too much yeast remaining in the solution, or both!
In either case, take extra care when cleaning these bottles for reuse. Any residual cells from a ring inside the neck of the bottle, whether it is from a bacterial infection or yeast krausen, can effect your next batch of beer. Scrub the inside of each bottle with a bottlebrush before soaking, or consider replacing the bottles altogether.
A pellicle can spread even more inside a bottle if wild yeast or bacteria is present, and can be an easily identifiable sign of infection.
63 | My bottled beer has too much carbonation |
CAUSE
Beer was not fully attenuated prior to bottling, or too much priming sugar has been used, or there is a wild yeast or bacterial infection causing excessive fermentation in the bottle and producing a large amount of CO2.
SOLUTION
These beers, usually known as “gushers,” can be an unpleasant surprise when opening bottles for the first time. They can also be very dangerous.
Most glass bottles are rated three-to-four volumes of CO2, which is about 60 to 100 percent more pressure than a normal homebrew should see. However, bottles can have flaws (see Problem 58) and over time, with frequent reuse, can develop chips and cracks, making them more likely to explode under excessive pressure.
To safely handle over-carbonated bottles, chill them as much as you possibly can without freezing them. CO2 dissolves into liquid more easily at lower temperature and the bottles will be safer to open when cold. Consider wearing gloves and eye protection when opening bottles.
If you’d like to recover the beer, very carefully remove the bottle cap, just allowing a hiss of CO2 to escape slowly. Allow the bottle to warm about 10 degrees—which allows more CO2 to come out of solution—and recap with new, sanitized caps. There will be a larger than normal amount of carbonic acid present in the beers, which can be recognized as a slightly metallic taste.
To prevent overcarbonation, be sure to follow cleaning and sanitation procedures for bottles, caps, and bottling equipment, and pay attention to priming sugar measurements; a little goes a long way. Finally, be patient! Beer that hasn’t finished fermenting can have problems, other than overcarbonation in the bottle, that manifest as unpleasant flavors.
Head is beer! The foam at the top of a beer will reduce to about 20 percent of its physical volume and eventually settle down into beer.
64 | I can’t get my kegged beer to carbonate |
CAUSE
Poor seals or broken gaskets are causing the keg to lose pressure, temperature and pressure are out of balance (too warm, not high enough pressure), or the wrong amount of priming sugar was used.
SOLUTION
On a Cornelius keg (a standard soda keg), there are five main gaskets to check: one each on the dip tubes beneath the posts, one on each of the posts, and one main large gasket around the lid.
Remove the posts to check the state of the gaskets on the dip tubes; they should be whole rings with no cracks. The gaskets on the posts themselves should not cause a keg to de-gas. The lid gasket should also be a whole ring, with no cracks. This is the gasket that is most likely to have a poor seal. Be sure that the lid is snugly in place and that no gas is leaking through the gasket. A spray bottle filled with water and a few drops of dish detergent can help find these leaks—if you spray the area and bubbles form, you’ve found the leak. (For more specific resources, see Problem 65.)
If you are force-carbonating, the beer must be cold for CO2 to dissolve into liquid. Beer will take a few days to carbonate at 38°F (3°C) at 14psi. If possible, lay the keg on its side to increase the surface area for CO2 to dissolve into liquid. It is possible to carbonate beer faster but using higher pressure, colder temperatures, or both. The warmer the beer is, the higher the CO2 pressure will need to be to dissolve into liquid. There are CO2 charts available from your local homebrew store, as well as on the Internet.
If you are using priming sugar, be sure that you have used enough sugar (less than you would in bottles!), and that the keg is in a warm environment that allows yeast to ferment the sugars and create CO2.
One of the greatest benefits to kegging your own beer is that you can pour yourself as much or as little beer as you’d like at any given time. If your beer is coming out flat, check your keg is in good working order.
65 | I need to force-carbonate my keg really quickly |
CAUSE
Beer has finished fermenting, but too late to take the time to properly carbonate before the event you’d like to serve it at.
SOLUTION
Getting beer to carbonate is a function of temperature, pressure, and time. In many home-kegging environments, carbonation is achieved by pushing CO2 into the head space of a keg and waiting for the carbonation to fully dissolve into the liquid, which can take days.
To achieve carbonation more quickly, you might try the following:
• Get a carbonation stone. This is a small, porous ceramic, or stainless steel piece that is put inside your keg, through which you can inject CO2. Small CO2 bubbles dissolve into liquid faster than large ones. The colder the liquid is, the more efficiently CO2 will dissolve into solution.
• Lie the keg on its side while carbonating. This increases the amount of surface area available for CO2 to dissolve into liquid. If you haven’t cleaned and sanitized every internal surface of your keg well, this may lead to an increased infection risk.
• Shake the keg. Shaking it while under pressure will allow some of the CO2 to dissolve into liquid quickly. This allows more CO2 to enter the head space of the keg, keeping there what’s already in the solution.
• Increase the pressure. CO2 pushed at 30psi at 38°F (3°C) will carbonate a keg much more quickly than 14 psi at 38°F (3°C). However, there is a risk of overcarbonation if you’re not careful.
• Combine several of these methods. Placing a 38°F (3°C) keg on its side, with CO2 at 30 psi, while occasionally shaking the keg, can carbonate beer in a matter of hours. Again, be careful of over-carbonating while using this method.
Pouring a beer from a well-balanced draft system should take about eight seconds, finishing with about a half-inch collar of foam at the top of the glass.
66 | My Cornelius keg won’t seal properly/is leaking |
CAUSE
Gaskets are worn or cracked, springs in posts are worn, or the lid of the keg is not sealed well.
SOLUTION
It’s important to be comfortable with taking all parts of a Cornelius keg apart and putting them back together again, as it is the only way you can be sure that it is perfectly cleaned and sanitized. It is also vital for identifying gas leaks during regular use. Posts unscrew from the keg. Beneath each post is a dip tube: one short one, which barely enters the keg (the gas tube), one long one that reaches to the bottom of the keg (the liquid tube). The dip tubes have identical gaskets that allow the post seal with the keg. Each of these gaskets should be free of any cracks, and should snugly fit around their dip tube.
Each post has a poppet valve inside which consists of a spring and a poppet gasket. The spring should easily keep the poppet gasket pressed up against the top of the post. These poppets are entirely replaceable.
Each post also has an O-ring on the exterior of the post that allows fittings to attach snugly and securely. These O-rings should fit into a small groove on the post and have no cracks or nicks in them.
The posts are interchangeable on pin-lock kegs but not on ball-lock kegs, which have separate gas and liquid-style posts. Use silicone tape on threads to create an airtight seal.
The lid has a large O-ring that should be easy to slip on and off. The O-ring should not have any cracks or nicks and should not be worn in any spot. On used kegs, the opening where the lid fits may be slightly warped and may have difficulty sealing without pressure. Pulling up on the O-ring while pressuring the keg may sometimes help create a seal. You may try coating the O-ring with a food-grade silicone grease.
Cornelius kegs are often retired soda kegs and often need to be upfitted or repaired before they can be used for homebrew. Repeated use over time can mean intrinsic parts get worn and need replacing.
67 | My kegged beer gets over-carbonated/flat |
CAUSE
The pressure that beer is being served at in the kegerator is set too high or too low.
SOLUTION
Serving beer correctly is the act of pushing enough CO2 into a keg to keep CO2 in solution, while also pushing it up a hose and out into a glass. When pouring a glass of beer, liquid should be flowing at the rate of roughly 2 ounces per second without excessive foaming.
The most common set up for home kegerators is a 5-foot-long vinyl hose with a 3/16 inch internal diameter leading from the keg to the faucet. In such applications, depending on the carbonation level in the beer, the gauge on the CO2 tank should be set between 12 and 14 psi for a proper pour. If the pressure is set too low, the beer will de-gas as it is being poured. If the pressure is set too high, the amount of CO2 dissolved in the beer will increase over time. If your kegerator is colder than 38°F (3°C), reduce the pressure on the CO2 tank gauge. If your kegerator is warmer than 38°F (3°C), increase the pressure. Consult a CO2 chart for pressures that correspond with ideal levels of CO2. You shouldn’t need to adjust more than 1–2 psi for temperature.
If your hoses are longer, of a different material, or of a different diameter, consult manufacturer’s information about the amount of resistance present in each foot of hose and adjust accordingly. Different materials can vary widely. A useful website for specific information about a wide variety of materials and draft setups is www.draughtquality.org.
If your kegged beer shows uncontrollable carbonation there might be a fault with the pressure or the temperature in your keg.
68 | My kegged beer tastes like rancid butter |
CAUSE
The draft lines leading from the keg to the faucet are dirty. Draft line infections are usually due to pediococcus growth, which can spread down the line and into the keg, infecting the entire batch of beer if not properly dealt with.
SOLUTION
In a commercial setting, draft lines should be cleaned every two weeks. While that may seem impractical in a home setting, maintaining clean draft lines can mean better beer and less waste while you’re pouring homebrew, so it’s important to keep up with it.
While you can purchase specific beer line cleaner, you can use the same caustic cleaner and sanitizer that you use to clean and sanitize your brewing equipment in your draft lines.
Begin by draining the lines and flushing them through with hot caustic solution. Ideally, you should allow the hot caustic solution to rest in your beer lines for at least 20 minutes before flushing out with clean water. Disassemble and clean the faucets and any fittings which touch beer when you clean the beer lines. If any of those pieces have infections and are not cleaned, they can spread back to the beer lines quickly and easily.
Flush cold water through the lines until there is no visible debris being flushed from the lines. If you have access to pH strips, use pH strips to measure the pH of the liquid to be sure that it matches tap water.
If possible, repeat the process every three months with an acid cleaner to help remove beer stone. Beer stone is calcium oxylate—a calcium that can precipitate out of beer and settle into your beer lines, causing foaming, and giving bacteria microscopic cracks and crevices to live in.
Beer lines should be replaced entirely every year.
Even the best made beer is only as good as the method in which it’s stored and served. Lines should be cleaned as often as possible, and replaced entirely once per year.
69 | I don’t know how to bottle beer from a keg |
CAUSE
Whether bringing homebrew to a friend’s house or entering beer into a competition, there are times when packaging kegged beer into a bottle is desirable, but it’s not always easy to figure out how to do this.
SOLUTION
In a pinch, you can just fill a bottle off of the tap and cap it. The shelf life of that bottle might not be the greatest—you’ll want to consume it within a few days—but it will work.
The best possible scenario is to clean and sanitize a bottle, purge it with CO2, and then fill it under pressure using a counter-pressure bottle filler, or a beer gun. These are available from your local homebrew supplier and are easy to operate. The idea is that the bottle is pressurized to the same pressure that the keg is, then the beer is filled into the pressurized environment, releasing CO2 from the bottle at the same rate that beer enters the bottle, reducing foaming and loss. When the bottle is filled, the filler is removed, a cap is placed on the foam coming out of the bottle, and the remaining CO2 is trapped inside of a clean, sterile, pressurized environment.
If a counter-pressure filler is unavailable, be very sure that the bottles are cleaned and sanitized, and, if you can, find a way to purge oxygen from the bottle using CO2 before filling.
Finally, if you can find a hose that will fit over the end of your tap, and also reach to the bottom of a bottle, you can fill from the bottom up—pushing air out of the bottle, rather than splashing beer into the bottle—to minimize the bottle’s oxygen content.
A beer gun is used to fill bottles with beer that has already been carbonated and in a keg. Beer guns are useful for making small amounts of beer portable or to enter them into competitions.