Question about counter pressure bottling and foam

[iceman_ii]

Sorry to bother the group, but I have a question about counter pressure bottling... so far, I have bottled three batches, one hard cider, one sparkling wine (in beer bottles) and a wheat beer. All three foamed a bit more than I would have thought, I was able to control the cider and the wine by SERIOUSLY throttling back the relief valve, but the beer was nearly uncontrollable. I am thinking the beer was so difficult in part because there was so much protein, but in part I THINK because of HOW I am doing it. I am force carbonating in kegs at about 30psi in the fridge at about 50 degrees (the darned refrigerator won't get colder... when I go to bottle, I use a bottling pressure of about 8-10 psi... but I see a LOT of bubbles comming out of solution in the feed line from the keg, and the pressure isn't keeping it suppressed...

I THINK this is telling me that because I force carbed so high, the counter pressure isn't sufficient to keep the dissolved CO2 from coming out of solution in the short time from the keg to the bottle?

I was thinking about using the higher pressure to speed the carb-bing... but then after a couple days at 30, drop the pressure to about 15 using a spunding valve... and letting it rest to come to a 15psi equilibrium for a couple of days... This should give me a CO2 level of about 2.3 volumes, and keep the pressure differential from the keg pressure to the bottling pressure from being quite to high...

Any thoughts or advice would be GREATLY appreciated!

 

[seilenos]

It sounds like you are over carbonating.

I do 24 hours at 35 F / 30-35 psi and then dial back to serving pressure (10-12 psi).
I do not purposely release the pressure in the keg when dialing back.
This gets me in the range of 2.3 - 2.5 vols pretty quickly.

50 F / 30 psi for a few days and you'd be somewhere around 3.0 - 3.5 vols.

 

[iceman_ii]

It sounds like you are over carbonating.

I do 24 hours at 35 F / 30-35 psi and then dial back to serving pressure (10-12 psi).
I do not purposely release the pressure in the keg when dialing back.
This gets me in the range of 2.3 - 2.5 vols pretty quickly.

50 F / 30 psi for a few days and you'd be somewhere around 3.0 - 3.5 vols.

Thanks for the insight... unfortunately, my refrigerator won't go down much more than 50, so I will have to play with it a bit to see what I can come up with

 

[doug293cz]

You are going to have problems, at some level, until you get a fridge that will get down below about 35°F. The higher the temp, the more the beverage wants to foam, at a constant carbonation level.

Trying to fill at a lower pressure than the equilibrium CO2 pressure (chart pressure for bev temp and carb level) will encourage CO2 breakout in the beverage tubing, which will make foaming worse.

As @seilenos mentioned, the equilibrium carb level for 50°F and 30psi is 3.4 - 3.5 volumes.

Lowering your carbonation level should help, but with what you are bottling, the lower carb level may be less than satisfactory.

Chilling your bottles (if you can) should also help.

Brew on

 

[iceman_ii]

You are going to have problems, at some level, until you get a fridge that will get down below about 35°F. The higher the temp, the more the beverage wants to foam, at a constant carbonation level.

Trying to fill at a lower pressure than the equilibrium CO2 pressure (chart pressure for bev temp and carb level) will encourage CO2 breakout in the beverage tubing, which will make foaming worse.

As @seilenos mentioned, the equilibrium carb level for 50°F and 30psi is 3.4 - 3.5 volumes.

Lowering your carbonation level should help, but with what you are bottling, the lower carb level may be less than satisfactory.

Chilling your bottles (if you can) should also help.

Brew on

Yep, the bottles were chilled in the freezer, and I was in fact getting a lot of CO2 coming out of solution in the lines... on a happy note, I just checked the temp in my refrigerator, and it looks like something has changed - FOR THE BETTER!... I had it turned down all the way cold, and it seems to be holding at 31... going to pull it up a bit off the bottom and see how closely I can get it to 35... not sure what caused it to suddenly get colder, but I will not complain!