OldBunny

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Ever since I switched to swing-top bottles (.5 liter and 1 liter) I find my beer is over-carbonated. That is, the top opens with a BANG and I get massive amounts of head. If I let the bottle sit after opening, foam starts to come out of the bottle.

Back when I was crown capping 12 oz. bottles, I simply used the entire 4 oz. packet of corn sugar that came with the kit and never had a problem. Now, I've cut back to 3 oz. in a 5-gallon batch and get too much carbonation. Do the larger bottles require less priming?

Revvy

Recipes 

How are you bottling? Are you adding sugar to each bottle? If you're bulk priming it doesn't matter what size bottles your using, you're dilluting the amount of priming sugar based on the volume of beer, NOT the size of the bottle. In fact even if you were to be adding sugar directly to the bottles the amount of sugar needed in a larger sized bottle of beer would be MORE for a pint bottle than a 12 ouncer.

If your beer is gushing in a larger volume of beer, more than likely your not accounting for the fact that the larger the bottle, the more time the beer needs to carb up- it takes longer to saturate the headspace in the bottle and saturate the beer with co2.

If you're openning the beer sooner than 3-4 weeks when the beer is at 70 degrees, then it's gushing because the co2 hasn't locked into solution yet.

If you watch Poindexter's video on time lapsed carbonation, you will see that in many instances, before a beer is carbed it my gush, that's not from infection, or mixing of sugars, but because the co2 hasn't evened out- it hasn't been pulled fully into the beer. Think of it as there's a lot of co2 being generated and most of it is in the headspace, not in the beer, so there's still "over pressure" in the bottle, so it gushes when it is opened.

But when the beer is truly carbed it all evens out, across the bottles.


Not knowing yet what you're doings, I can say that the beers not gushing because of the size of the bottle, especially if you're using LESS sugar....it's for other reasons...More than likely because you're going by your 12 ounce bottle timeframe and openning the larger bottle too soon.

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OldBunny

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Thanks. That makes a lot of sense. I'll try to keep my thirst in check for a few weeks

OldBunny

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I was talking about this problem with my wife the other night (she doesn't like beer, but she's a biochemist). She noted that this problem started about the time I started brewing with the local tap water instead of bottled.

I haven't had me water analyzed in some years, but the las time I did, it was fairly heavy in iron ions.

Could this have anything to do with me carbonation problems?

duboman

Recipes 

Highly doubtful, as Revvy stated above, the larger the bottle the more time it will take for the beer to fully absorb the CO2 and properly carbonate so park your bottles somewhere and leave 'em alone for a few more weeks, or, go back to bottling smaller bottles

Revvy

Recipes 

The obvious is usually the correct thing. You don't need to look for other theories. We deal with a dozen bottling questions a day...I've seen this a thousand times. I've rarely been wrong where bottling is concerned.

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Like my snazzy new avatar? Get Sons of Zymurgy swag, here, and brew with the best.

Revvy's one of the cool reverends. He has a Harley and a t-shirt that says on the back "If you can read this, the bitch was Raptured. - Madman

I gotta tell ya, just between us girls, that Revvy is HOT. Very tall, gorgeous grey hair and a terrific smile. He's very good looking in person, with a charismatic personality... he drives like a ****ing maniac! - YooperBrew

OldBunny

Recipes 

Well that didn't quite work. Around midnight on July 22nd approximately 18 half-liter bottles exploded, leaving broken glass all over the shop. Two of the cap assemblies went through the plastic shelf above. Obviously I did something very wrong.

unionrdr

Recipes 

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duboman

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WOW! that's a huge bummer!!!

Time to go back and review your complete process including the verification of final gravity prior to bottling and how you are measuring your priming sugar and bottling If you need some help in this let us know, you definitely do not want a repeat of that!

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OldBunny

Recipes 

I've pretty much reached the conclusion that I screwed up on checking final gravity. This was a somewhat higher OG that I usually brew and I let my self get rushed to bottle it (pending vacation).

Won't do that again.

At least I wasn't in the shop when it blew.