4 volumes of CO2 in regular beer bottles?

I just bottled up a dunkelweizen yesterday. I overestimated how much beer I had and now I've ended up with beer that will have about 4 or 4.1 volumes of CO2 in it. This is not outside of the style guidelines of 3.6 to 4.5, but it is higher than I have ever used. I bottled half of the batch in the larger 17 oz german style bottles that Ayinger, Paulaner, etc come in, and the other half in standard american 12 oz bottles. I'm not too worried about the bigger bottles as they are made of thick glass, but the 12oz bottles are not heavy duty at all. Will I have a problem with the smaller bottles?

You should be fine, but if you're worried you should stick the bottles in a garbage bag just incase they break.

+1 on the garbage bag lined box.

Sounds good, hopefully none will explode

be very careful. I have a good friend who has lost the use of his eye to exploding bottles that were over carbonated

maida7 said:

be very careful. I have a good friend who has lost the use of his eye to exploding bottles that were over carbonated

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Yeah, my friend has had a few very violent bottle bombs that threw glass all over the kitchen. The best thing to do with potential bottle bombs is to chill them throughly and open them slowly, which I will definitely be doing with these.

Old thread, but looking for an update:

OP...how'd it work out for you? I'm bottling a sour and would like to carb it pretty high.

Normal long necks might take it but the risk of exploding bottles is very real. I try to not go over 3 volumes with standard bottles. Beyond 3 I use grolsch, champagne, duvel and other belgian bottles. A standard long neck is roughly 210grams for 355 ml. A duvel bottle is like 380 grams for a 330ml bottle, with champagne/belgian cork bottles weighing in at at least 600 but more like 800-900 grams (in my experience) for 750ml. For high carbed beers I aim for as close to 1gram of glass to 1ml of beer if I can.

smokinghole said:

Normal long necks might take it but the risk of exploding bottles is very real. I try to not go over 3 volumes with standard bottles. Beyond 3 I use grolsch, champagne, duvel and other belgian bottles. A standard long neck is roughly 210grams for 355 ml. A duvel bottle is like 380 grams for a 330ml bottle, with champagne/belgian cork bottles weighing in at at least 600 but more like 800-900 grams (in my experience) for 750ml. For high carbed beers I aim for as close to 1gram of glass to 1ml of beer if I can.

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I agree. I'd be very leery of putting 4 volumes in an industry standard longneck. I think 3.5 is pushing it.

I have a collection of 16.9 Wheat bottles and 11.2oz bottles that I use for this purpose.

Would these work as far as a good Belgian-style bottle for doing 4 volumes CO2? I don't see any density info...but they use a cork and wires instead of a cap or swingtop.

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?cPath=178_356_62&products_id=10831

Depends how heavy the glass is. They should, but if they are thin, it may be risky. I bet if you ask AHS they can tell you for sure