Gushers! What do I do now?

I have a batch of Brown ale that seems to be gushing when I open up bottles. It doesn't paint the ceiling or anything, but more than half of the bottle of beer pours itself out, and ends up down the drain.

Bottles were refrigerated for between 6 and 48 hours before opening.

No hydro readings but I am pretty sure it came to full fermentation, as it sat in primary for probably 5 or 6 weeks when I got really busy in school.

I went on a road-trip while it was bottle conditioning, and it has officially been conditioned for over 3 weeks, supposedly it got kinda hot around here while I was out, but I doubt over 80 to 85 in the apartment at the hottest.

My guess is that I added too much priming sugar (I eyeballed 3/4 of a 1 cup measuring cup).

Question time:

So, what do I do now? Should I free up a keg, and pour it from that? Will aging it remedy the situation?

They're either overcarbonated, not done fermenting, or infected. How do they taste? If they taste fine, you can always pop the tops to vent some pressure (slowly) and re-cap them. If the yeast stalled and didn't complete fermentation, you could have kickstarted it again by adding priming sugar. Hydrometer readings are a MUST.

Put it in the fridge so they don't blow up and drink them before they get nasty if it IS an infection.

Aging won't remedy this. The thing to find out is whether this is from underattenuating fermenatation, overpriming, or sanitation.

Your description seems to indicate that you are ok on these points, which leaves one other cause: Incomplete mixing of the priming solution and beer. This might cause some bottles to be overcarbed, and others somewhat flat.

or your bottles were dirty and you're infected with the gusher bug.

Suthrncomfrt1884 said:

They're either overcarbonated, not done fermenting, or infected. How do they taste? If they taste fine, you can always pop the tops to vent some pressure (slowly) and re-cap them. If the yeast stalled and didn't complete fermentation, you could have kickstarted it again by adding priming sugar. Hydrometer readings are a MUST.

Put it in the fridge so they don't blow up and drink them before they get nasty if it IS an infection.

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Probably should have taken hydro readings, but the recipe didn't have a final gravity given anyway

I dont think there is any infection, none of the bottles taste nasty (one did taste slightly metallic? maybe I was trippen') that and I dont think I would hit 5 for 5 infected bottles so far.

there seems to be a bit more sediment than usual in these bottles, but it might just be the foam stirring up the sediment on the bottom of the bottles.

no bottle bombs yet (and after 3 weeks, I doubt I'll have any)

How would you vent and recap? less than a second after opening the bottle the foam starts pouring over and running down the sides. Would you just cap on foam? Would you use warm or cold beer for the recapping process? Would it just be easier to just pop bottles into a sanitized bucket and keg it?

infected - been there done that - tastes good NOW!!! Sorry but they ain't gonna get better. Bottle bombs can come way down the road.

I had 5 batches in a row and was going CRAZY tryign to figure out where the infection was coming from. Changed EVERYTHING - I was like hospital clean!

One only thing I did not change was my bucket but that was where I soaked everything in Star-san.

Finally - new bucket - every thing is great now - I know all about gushers and how they act.

5 for 5? infection - not the nasty bad taste kind, the gusher kind! They taste OK until they explode!

Yep, gushers often take a long time to make bottles explode and they can still taste fine. So drink them up if they are tasting ok and avoid the bombs that "might" happen later.