A Gusher

I brewed a hefe about 3 weeks ago with an OG of 1.046, and I bottled at an FG of 1.011. All of these numbers were what was described on the directions from Brewers Best. My final volume was closer to 4.5 gallons instead of 5 gallons. At bottling time I used the prescribed amount of priming sugar sent with the kit. It has been 7 days since I bottled and wanted to check on how it was going so I opened one that was at room temperature. Immediately upon opening the beer gushed out of the bottle. Can I expect this to be the case for the entire batch? If I chill the bottles down first will this still happen?

So, did you just do 2 weeks in the primary and then straight to bottles?

fezzman said:

So, did you just do 2 weeks in the primary and then straight to bottles?

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No, one week in primary, one week in secondary. Also, my final volume was closer to 4.5 gallons rather than 5 gallons.

You may have primed with more sugar, but not enough to be a huge problem. Were the bottles warm when you opened them? If they were refrigerate them first. Warmer liquid holds less CO2 in solution. When you opened the bottle all of the extra CO2 came blasting out.

Brewsmith said:

You may have primed with more sugar, but not enough to be a huge problem. Were the bottles warm when you opened them? If they were refrigerate them first. Warmer liquid holds less CO2 in solution. When you opened the bottle all of the extra CO2 came blasting out.

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Cooling the bottles worked. Put 2 in the refrigerator for a couple of hours and when I opened them, they were perfect. The beer turned out better than I thought it would, a little darker than I wanted though.

If it's too dark for you Brutus, go ahead and pack them up in a box and ship them to me. I'd be happy to examine just how dark they are!

Glad to hear it turned out well for you! Congrats!

Orpheus said:

If it's too dark for you Brutus, go ahead and pack them up in a box and ship them to me. I'd be happy to examine just how dark they are!

Glad to hear it turned out well for you! Congrats!

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I didn't say I didn't like it.

Also, it's pretty easy to get some bottles with more priming sugar in them than others. It's not a bad idea to stir the bottling bucket once or twice (with an impeccably sanitized spoon, of course) over the course of bottling to ensure that the sugar remains well mixed.

I have a dubbel that I brewed in April that's drinking very nicely now. Some of the bottles are pretty highly carbed (which is what I intended), while others are just adequately carbed. It may have been the priming sugar thing, or it may just be that some bottles were not perfectly sealed and they've lost a bit of pressure over time.