I'm confused, are you still storing your beers at 45? If that's the case you've retarded the carbornation process.
There's no such thing as lagering for ales, when you go below 55 degrees all you do is put the yeast to sleep. You don't clean the beer, nor do you allow the beer to actually carb and condition the beer. You stop the process nearly entirely.
So let's say you "lagered" the beer for 3 weeks, then you brought it to the proper carbing temp for a week,
it's not 4 weeks carbed and conditioned, it's ONE week into the actual carbing process....
If it's gushing it's not over carbed, it's because it hasn't absorbed the co2 in solution and looked the carb level in yet....Your only at the earliest level of carbonation.
Watch poindexter's video from my bottling blog.
Like he shows several times, even @ 1 week, all the hissing, all the foaming can and does happen, but until it's dissolved back into the beer, your don't really have carbonation, with tiny bubbles coming out of solution happening actually inside the glass, not JUST what's happening on the surface.
The
3 weeks at 70 degrees, that we recommend is the
minimum time it takes for average gravity beers to carbonate and condition. Higher grav beers take longer.
Anything less than 70 degrees, means a longer time to get carbed and conditioned...below the dormancy temp of the yeast (like at 45 degree) it's gonna take forever.
But until then the beer can even appear to be overcarbed, when really nothing is wrong.
Everything you need to know about carbing and conditioning, can be found here
Of Patience and Bottle Conditioning. With emphasis on the word,
"patience."
Let the beer set for a full three weeks at 70, then chill a bottle down, it should be fine then.
Remember, ale yeast + lager temps = retarded process, nothing else.....[/QUOTE]
Huh? Exactly as style demands a Kolsch is top fermented at warm fermentation temps then cold conditioned/lagered.
Kölsch is warm fermented at a temperature around 13 to 21°C (55 to 70°F) and then cold-conditioned, or lagered. It is a pale, highly attenuated, hoppy, clear, top-fermenting beer with an original gravity of between 11 and 16 degrees Plato (1.0441.065). In practice almost all Kölsch brands have a very similar gravity near the middle of this range.