Did I make bottle bombs?

Ok, so I made a Belgian Wit in March, and it had an O.G of 50, and a F.G. of 14. That's 4.7% abv. My efficiency was 75%.

I tried to duplicate the recipe in July, but hadn't dialed in my process yet. I ended up with 81% efficiency and an O.G. of 60. That's fine, as far as I'm concerned, but here's the issue. I began bottling today, the way I normally do, but I hadn't checked my gravity at all since brew day. I know, I know, rookie mistake. I had crazy fermentation from a big starter (Wyeast Belgian Wit), and I thought it was done. Well, I check my gravity before adding the priming sugar, and guess what?! F.G. 26. By my calculations, that's 4.4% abv. It's pretty close to the first batch, but it should have been higher due to more sugars available for the yeast.

Since my attenuation was crap, should I look forward to bottle bombs?

In a week I'm going to bottle a beer with similar numbers. The way I see it is that if those were fermentable sugars left in the beer then fermentation wouldn't have stopped. In other words, the yeast will probably only ferment the priming sugar, you'll have normal pressure and carbonation, and probably just more body than you're used to in a wit. The yeast opted not to ferment those sugars during the primary fermentation, so they're probably not going to ferment them in the bottle.

It's possible that your fears are correct, but if you had a good starter and normal fermentation temps then I don't see why that would happen. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I've had beers that had stuck fermentations, where they've fermented almost completely and then stopped. After moving the carboy and leaving it for several hours, fermentation started back up. Racking the beer probably woke the yeast back up. Chances are, you'll have bottle bombs. Good luck!

Laurel said:

Chances are, you'll have bottle bombs. Good luck!

Click to expand...

great....

10 characters