Re-carbing 500ml bottles

Is the 'search' function for hbt working for everyone else right now? Every time I go to use it I just get brought to an unhelpful database. I notice that its not 'powered' by google anymore, I wonder if that has anything to do with it.... Anyways.

So I got a new (larger) autosiphon a while ago and used it my first time when I was bottling. I usually lose about a gallon of beer bottling with my last autosiphon due to a combo of yeast cake and my siphon not reaching all the way to the bottom of my carboy. This is usually not a big deal for me because the beer that I bottle comes out super clean from not disturbing the yeast.

This time, to my pleasant surprise, my larger autosiphon got almost every last drop of sweet sweet beer out of the carboy with out disturbing the yeast! Problem being that I underestimated how much priming sugar I would need because I only accounted for 3.0 gallons of beer and actually got just a little over 3.5 gallons. (It was a 4 gallon batch)

So now my beer is damn near flat because I was shooting for low carbonation for the style to begin with.

So what I was thinking was that since I use 500ml bottles, I would just drop a carb tab in each one, recap, and wait a little while longer. The instructions on the carb tabs that I have say to use 1 drop per 12oz (341ml) bottle.
Too much carb? Bottle bomb potential? Opinions? Thoughts?

Also, feel free to chime in on this question: what's worse? Overcarbed, or undercarbed beer?


Oh, and just so we can get these counter questions out of the way. The bottles have been carbing for 3 weeks at 69-70 degrees and have sat 5 days min. in the fridge.

Thanks all.

I would vote for overcarbed being worse simply because of bottle bombs.

I had a buddy way undercarb a batch once and he stuck them in the fridge to get as much carbonation in the liquid as possible and then dropped a carb drop in each bottle. Let them sit warmed up again for the three weeks and they did indeed have more bubbles in the beer.

How much though to put in I think would be a guess at best

The thing is, if you open a partially carbonated beer and drop in a carb tab, the thousands of nucleation points might cause so much foaming that it might volcano up on you. You could try one and see if it works, and if it does do the rest.

I know my post won't help you with your current issue but I've labeled my carboys from empty to 6.5 gallons in half gallon increments. When I cook my priming sugar, I know exactly what I'm mixing it with. I usually put 6 in the ferm and bottle 5.25 or 5.5 depending on the size of the yeast cake because, like you, I don't want to disturb it.

Happy Brewing!

And by label I mean I used blue painters tape and just wrote on'em. I'm sure people etch or whatever but I'm weary of purposely scratching a giant glass thing that may or may not, according to legend, spontaneously explode.