Over Carbed Bottles

Greetings again folks. I recently brewed a Belgian IPA, 2 weeks primary and 3 weeks secondary. I tasted a bottle at 2 weeks in bottle and it was perfect carbonation. My questions are...

When it reaches its desired carbonation, should I move it to a fridge/basement? I've heard conflicting stuff on this so sorry if it's a noob question.

#2, is there anyway to release some carbonation? Maybe crack the lid and recap fast before it gushes?


And just a helpful tip for anyone with a similar problem, put the bottles in the freezer for 30 minutes before drinking them and the gusher effect seems to go away.

You didn't really state explicitly if you are having a carbonation problem, only that you have perfect carbonation after 2 weeks in the bottle. Two weeks might be enough to get adequate carbonation. Just because it's good then doesn't mean that at 4 weeks or 6 weeks the bottles will explode. With carbonation, the gas dissolved in the beer increases at a decreasing rate as the yeast finish metabolizing the remaining bottling sugars. Think of a flattening curve at 2 weeks- the curve will be nearly flat at 3 weeks and in almost all cases absolutely flat after that.

Bottle bombs can be the result of a slow yeast coupled with an impatient or miscalculating brewer. If your beer was done fermenting prior to bottling, then it should carbonate fine.

One more question- how much priming sugar did you use, and how did you distribute it to the bottles? Bulk priming, individual doses per bottle, mix or no mix...?

Did you take a gravity measurement prior to bottling?

If you used the correct amount of priming sugar it will reach the right amount of carbonation just as the last of the sugar is fermented so there will be no need to stop the carbonation process by chilling the bottles (though that may in fact stop it if you needed to). If you end up with over carbonated bottles I would just deal with it when you serve them. Trying to reduce the carbonation is more likely to screw up your beer by introducing oxygen or some other contaminate. Better to just deal with the over carbonation as you open them for drinking.

Sorry for not being super specific.

I have not had a bottle bomb, just some gushing.

I did the standard 3 day FG readings at 1.012 I believe.

Priming sugar I did the 5oz into 1cup of water and into the bottling bucket. I did not stir it except for the swirling that came with the siphoning of the beer into the bucket.

The carbonation problem is that almost all of them now are turning into gushers unless I nearly freeze them prior to opening.

Thank you in advance

unionrdr said:

Beers will carbonate in bottles a bit faster than they condition. The flavors/aromas take longer to meld together & get good. My pal ales (APA,IPA) take 4-5 weeks till they're at their best. I've had some that would foam out the bottle by an inch or so before. Or even produced a lot of head a bit too easy. You can't fix it in the freezer. I burst a few bottles that way. In other words,the co2 can't dissolve into solution that fast. In this case,mine were in the fridge for a week to get all that extra co2 into solution. It's a bit of a slow process. Bit works if the brewer gives it the time it needs.

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Should I try putting a dozen into the fridge for a week and see if the CO2 dissolves more?

Did you have 5 gallons? If you had less than 5 gallons it is very easy to put too much priming sugar into the batch! (I know this from experience) I cannot measure the finished volume very well as I rack straight from the primary leaving the trub and "stuff" behind and I do not have volume marks on my fermentors.

I rack to the bottling bucket that has volume graduations on it. Based on the final volume I add my sugar to the water on the stove! If I am not mistaken, I had ~5.25 gallons last batch and used 4.65oz of dextrose in 2 quarts of water which (according to beersmith) should have given me 2.5 volumes of CO2!

5oz is plenty of sugar for a 5G batch. If the sugar wasn't mixed well into the finished beer before racking into bottles, it is possible that some bottles will have low carbonation and others will have high carbonation.

Live and learn, and open them over the sink!

Chill your beer and tilt on a 45 degree angle then open. It seems to help with the gushing.

Does UV light kill yeast? Slightly tangent question, but I'm curious.