venting/recapping overcarbed bottles

I have an IPA that has been in bottles for almost 2 months. Chilled a few for a couple days and when I open them I am getting gushers. The beer tastes good but definately seems over-carbonated. I'm not really sure how this could have happened. It was a 5 gallon batch and I used 5oz priming sugar that came with the kit (Austin Homebrew DFH 60 min clone). FG was 1.018.

Anyway my question is about venting some of the C02. I have read that you can gently pry the bottle caps to release some of the pressure and re-cap. Is this possible without replacing all the caps or should I sanitize 40+ caps and replace every one? I want to let this one condition and mellow a bit, but I don't want to risk bottle bombs.

I've never heard of releasing some of the pressure. I would be concerned that you have a wild yeast infection or even more likely just some bacterial infection and even if you did release some pressure you would end up in the same place within a short time. If you do it you will have to replacve the caps. You would never be sure that you would get the seal if you reused. I would think that if you have gone two months already you should not have to worry about bombs but I would put everything in a big plastic bag just in case. You could try chilling the bottles to just above freezing and then opening a couple to try and pour them, sometimes that will work and you don't have to dump them. Anyway, good luck.

If you sanitize things you won't risk infection.

I have the same problem. The issue is that if it is a gusher you will lose a lot of beer when you remove the cap. I would think you should replace the caps, but if you are just leaking out a bit from the edge then try to re-use it. Only do a couple of bottles. Let us know how it works out.

I sanitize everything using starsan. I don't think it's infection because the beer actually taste really good. This was my first partial mash attempt and everything went very well until this issue. I will try to vent a few bottles and see what happens.

Maybe you lost more beer than you though during racking, bottling, etc. So then you could have primed for 5 gal when you really had 4 or so. I've made that mistake before. You could do what the last guy said and chill them to 33F or so and open them quickly and pour into a glass before it gushes everywhere. You can also pry them gently, let it vent (you'll hear hissing) and reseal. I've done this before with the tip of a triangle shaped bottle opener under one of the ridges in the cap then resealing with my bench capper. This will help a bit but will be hard to reduce the carbonation predictably. You don't however, need to worry about bottle bombs if they've been in the bottle at room temp for 2 months now. If they haven't blown by now they won't. In fact, since it is an IPA I'd be drinking those sooner rather than later before you loose that hoppy goodness.

brew2enjoy said:

Anyway my question is about venting some of the C02. I have read that you can gently pry the bottle caps to release some of the pressure and re-cap. Is this possible without replacing all the caps or should I sanitize 40+ caps and replace every one? I want to let this one condition and mellow a bit, but I don't want to risk bottle bombs.

Click to expand...

I've had some bottle bombs in the past...I didn't recap them, just slowly released the pressure over a period of hours (or days).

I just gently pry up one edge of the cap to release the pressure until it starts to foam (an old style 'church key' bottle opener is perfect for this), then put it back in the fridge for a couple of hours. Usually 3 or 4 times will release enough pressure that I can then get a good pour. It's a pain in the butt, but better than losing most of the beer to a gusher.

I actually had an almost identical problem on my first batch. Though the over carbonation was due to poor measurement. I put almost twice as much priming sugar as I was supposed to so on the second and third day I opened up the caps and recapped. I'm going to guess that your over carbonation is going to be inconsistent. The priming sugar probably just didn't mix well. I'd bet money that you are going to find some bottles later that are near flat and some that are perfect.

So were they always overcarbed or were they fine intially and THESE happen to be gushing. If it's gushing because of a late onset infection, then there's no point in recapping, the infection is going to continue converting unfermentables into fermentables and eating it, and producing co2. So uncapping and re capping isn't really gonna stop the process so you might as well just either drink the beer or dump it.

If it's truly over carbed, I would use fresh caps. You have to bend the cap to open them, so I wouldn't trust re-using the caps. I'd go with fresh sanitized caps.

Revvy said:

So were they always overcarbed or were they fine intially and THESE happen to be gushing. If it's gushing because of a late onset infection, then there's no point in recapping, the infection is going to continue converting unfermentables into fermentables and eating it, and producing co2. So uncapping and re capping isn't really gonna stop the process so you might as well just either drink the beer or dump it.

If it's truly over carbed, I would use fresh caps. You have to bend the cap to open them, so I wouldn't trust re-using the caps. I'd go with fresh sanitized caps.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the late response. Yes they have been overcarbed since I tried the first one at 3 weeks. It doesnt seem to be a priming sugar distribution problem either as they all seem to be the same so far.

I'm not completely ruling out infection but I do practice good sanitizing methods and I use a bottle vinator with star san right before filling.

I did a little experiment last night with one bottle. I was able to lightly pry up on the cap until I heard hissing. Once I had bleed a good amount of C02 out I took pressure off the cap and it seemed to re-seal itself. I put it in the fridge and will try it today and see if it's any better.