Recarbing beer

I recently brewed a Saison. I always check a bottle after a couple days to avoid bombs. The first one I checked was a gusher, so were the next two. I immediately refrigerated them all. After about 3 hours in the fridge I drank some with some friends to get rid of them, but none of the chilled ones gushed. After another day I decided to try another one and it seems undercarbed. If I take them out of the fridge will the yeast reactivate and finish conditioning/carbing?

If you are bottle carbing, you should always just let it sit for 3 weeks at room temp. You shouldn't really be trying to control carbonation with temperature. If you are having bottle bombs, make sure the beer is done fermenting before you bottle then start looking at your sanitization process.

Also, if you open a beer that is in the process of carbing you will get a gusher.
Watch this vid:


I would take the beer out of the fridge and let it sit at room temp for 3 weeks.

I understand that and realize I jumped to a stupid conclusion in thinking that fermentation was over just because the SG was 1.009. My question now is; if I take them out of the fridge will the yeast come out of dormancy and continue to carb/condition?

Bheher said:

Also, if you open a beer that is in the process of carbing you will get a gusher.
Watch this vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlBlnTfZ2iw

I would take the beer out of the fridge and let it sit at room temp for 3 weeks.

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Thanks

JDFlow said:

I understand that and realize I jumped to a stupid conclusion in thinking that fermentation was over just because the SG was 1.009. My question now is; if I take them out of the fridge will the yeast come out of dormancy and continue to carb/condition?

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The yeast will go back to work after you bring the temp back up to 70(ish). When the beer does get back up to that temp, you might want to gently shake the yeast back in to suspension to get them working again. As mentioned above you should never judge carbonation by opening a warm bottle that's only been conditioning for a few days. It's likely to either always gush or be way under carbed. If you insist on "testing" a bottle of beer early you should always chill it for at least 48 hours. A week of chilling would be even better. That gives the co2 that's trapped in the neck of the bottle time to absorb in to the beer...

JDFlow said:

I understand that and realize I jumped to a stupid conclusion in thinking that fermentation was over just because the SG was 1.009. My question now is; if I take them out of the fridge will the yeast come out of dormancy and continue to carb/condition?

Click to expand...

OK So this is important info. Did you have three straight days of steady FG readings??

What yeast did you use? I ask because the French Saison yeast can murder some sugars. I had a brew go from 1.080 or so down to under 1!!! You could have some serious issues if those things aren't done yet.

To give you an idea. We add about 5oz of sugar to a beer to carb. Thats around 2.5 vol of CO2. With a 1.009 gravity, assuming it would have finished even at 1.004, you are talking about the equivalent of bottling with an additional 11oz of sugar. That comes out to about 7 vols all told. Beer bottles can hold about 4.. so

I took it out of the fridge. No bottle bombs! And just one week later the beer tastes amazingly better! I guess it was done fermenting. It sat in primary for a good 3 weeks. I used 3724 Belgian Saison. I wish washed yeast stayed good for a year because I'd love to have a few free rounds for next summer.