Theoretical Over Carbonation Bottle to Keg Experiment.

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LakesideBrewing

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I have 4 gallons of a Belgian Golden Strong Ale that is severely over carbonated. It sits in corked 750ML bottles and is beyond rescue. Apparently there is no hope for way too much priming sugar (my fault) and a sugar eater like 3711. Frustrating to say the least; I will be dumping it down the drain...

Then it hit me: dump it into a keg. Nothing to lose, right? I know splashing around homebrew into a keg is blasphemy but there is so much Co2 in the beer that I doubt it will get oxidized. The worst that can happen is I throw it all away. Which is what I intended on doing in the first place.

Has anyone done this?

-Mike
 
I've got a case of way over carbed cascaidian dark ale that has me in the same dilemma. Interested in how this turns out.
 
I held the beer and a sanitized keg at 34 degrees in my keezer for two days. I attached a 1 and 1/4 inch tube to the end of a large funnel and put that into the keg. I opened each 750ML bottle and slowly poured them into the funnel. I avoided as much splashing as possible but I still had a few foamy bottles. The hardest part was controlling the amount of foam that came to the top of the keg. I had to wait for the foam to settle down before adding the last of the bottles.

I will degas the beer over the next few days. Fingers crossed.

-Mike
 
Yep, this worked! :mug:

I degassed the keg a few times a day and tried to keep it at 12psi. I just poured out a pint and it's perfectly carbonated, no excessive foam and, most importantly, NO OXIDATION!

-Mike
 
Why didn't you run gas into the keg and just pour the bottles into the keg like normal? I've done that on completely flat beers that never bottle conditioned, sure it's a waste of CO2 but it keeps the beer from getting oxidized since you're pouring the bottle in the CO2 blanket. You most certainly introduced a bunch of oxygen but you might not notice it for a couple weeks. You might not really notice it much in a golden strong ale, but if it were an IPA it'd become obvious much faster.
 
Just a curiosity question - what volumes of CO2 did you carb to in the bottles? Reason I ask is I have a saison carbed to 3.25 volumes but you mentioned the Belgian yeast somehow making this worse. Obviously I used just such a yeast (566).
 
Why didn't you run gas into the keg and just pour the bottles into the keg like normal? I've done that on completely flat beers that never bottle conditioned, sure it's a waste of CO2 but it keeps the beer from getting oxidized since you're pouring the bottle in the CO2 blanket. You most certainly introduced a bunch of oxygen but you might not notice it for a couple weeks. You might not really notice it much in a golden strong ale, but if it were an IPA it'd become obvious much faster.

I search around for a solution for my overcarb problem but came up with nothing. But, I did fog the keg several times throughout my bottle 'dumping'. I also was not too concerned with oxidation because I knew we were going to kill the keg over the weekend.
 
Just a curiosity question - what volumes of CO2 did you carb to in the bottles? Reason I ask is I have a saison carbed to 3.25 volumes but you mentioned the Belgian yeast somehow making this worse. Obviously I used just such a yeast (566).

I was shooting for 3 volumes of Co2. I was off with the priming sugar a little. But I've also never had a bottled condition beer carbonate properly when I use Wyeast 3711. She's a beast for sure and makes amazing beers. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong with my calculations.
 

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