priming sugar mishap

So I bottled an extract IPA kit I won in the Dominion Cup today. Since it was a free kit, I fooled around with it a little. I threw some oak cubes in the secondary about 10 days ago, and then I split 2 oz of Willamette hops pellets, threw half of them in a week ago and made a hop tea out of the rest and added that before bottling. I didn't have any hop socks or anything, so I just dropped the pellets in the secondary, and since I didn't feel like transferring it again and waiting for it to clear, there was a ton of hop crud floating around in there. Since it was a free kit, I didn't stress about it and just racked off as much as I could cleanly and left a good bit in the carboy, more than I normally would.

Once I'd added the hop tea and priming solution, I was right around 4 gallons, so a good bit shy of what I normally would have. And of course it occurred to me right as I was capping the last bottle that I didn't adjust for that in the priming solution, which was for 5 gallons.

I put all the bottles in a rubbermaid container and covered them with a towel just in case they start going, but I'm guessing I'll be looking at some overcarbonated beers here in a coupl'a weeks. I was thinking I'd start testing them in a week, and if the carbonation seems about right, I'll move them out to the garage to get them as cold as I can (which, living in Georgia, isn't that cold this time of year unfortunately) to slow down or stop the fermentation. Fingers crossed.

That's what I did. I waited for them to crab at a decent level then threw as many as I could into an empty fermentor with some ice to crash them. Once they were cold I threw them in the fridge. SWMBO didn't like that I had 24 22oz bombers taking all that space but they went quick. For those few that seemed overcarbed I just poured a few in a couple pitchers then called a couple friends over.

I probably wouldn't really worry about it, but if you are, after a few days in the bottles, you can pry each cap to relieve pressure, then re-crimp each one. It's a pain in the ass, but it can be done.

With all that said, I bet you only added about a 1/2 oz too much. Which isn't going to ruin everything.

Yeah I hope it's not. I've got bad luck with IPAs it seems. Last time I brewed one it was way over carbonated too. You'd pour a glass and get an inch of beer and the rest would be head. Still tasty, though.

should be fizzy, but not explosive

grammatron said:

Yeah I hope it's not. I've got bad luck with IPAs it seems. Last time I brewed one it was way over carbonated too. You'd pour a glass and get an inch of beer and the rest would be head. Still tasty, though.

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It's possible that you've got a source of infection if that's been the case. Are you letting your beer ferment all the way out before priming and bottling? Also, this is a handy calcuator for priming sugar http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/priming.html.

Good luck,
J

Nah I've had no problems with infections, and that's the only other beer I've had carbonation problems with. Maybe it hadn't fermented all the way out. Not sure. That was 18 months ago at least.