Bottle aging and priming levels

[Hfxhomebrewer]

Hi folks, I just finished putting together my latest batch of beer, which is intended to be a summer beer (assuming I don't drink it before then), and I have a question regarding aging.

The only other time I have aged a beer for a long time in the bottle has led to carbonation which increases with age. The bottles I sampled early (a few weeks after bottling) were carbed how I wanted them to be, but I noticed as time went on the carbonation just kept increasing. After bottling that batch I stored the bottles in a warm part of the house for 2 weeks then moved to the colder basement, which is where they have been stored since. I understood you needed the warmth to generate the carbonation and the cold storage would stop carbonation, what am I missing?

For this latest batch, I need some advice on how to manage it so that I don't have a repeat. I don't want to open these in July and have them going nuts....would I under prime slightly now to take account for this? Should I store them differently?

Thanks for any advice you can offer!
Happy brewing!

 

[MichaelBrock]

If your carbonation continued for a long time after you bottled then I think you likely bottled too early. The simple sugar you add when priming will get fermented out fairly quickly and I don't think there will be any left to cause carbonation in long term storage. Also, 2 weeks is too early to judge the final carbonation, especially for a big beer. It is possible that you over primed (or again, you bottled too early) and the carbonation you found at 2 weeks wasn't the final carbonation.

Another option, although you probably would have noticed in the flavor/aroma, is that your beer was infected with a wild yeast/bacteria that is capable of fermenting sugars that your yeast wasn't able too. This is usually a long term process so while carbonation might have been fine initially, it grew as the wild yeast worked its way through the beer. Every now and then when judging beers we'll get gushers due to infection.

 

[Hfxhomebrewer]

Thanks Michael,

It must have been 10 months since I made this particular batch, and I've had bottles from the batch every month since. What I noticed was gradual increases in carbonation, not a sharp change. I didn't try it after a few weeks and then not again until recently.

My notes tell me this was bottled about 3 weeks after putting together, and at least 10 days after fermentation stopped completely (confirmed with gravity readings), which is how I do all my beers and have never had this issue. Then again, I've never had a batch around longer than about 2 months, and I dare say if I had finished this one within 2 months I would never have noticed an issue.

I batch prime using boiled, cooled water and dextrose, and use a calculator on tastybrew.com to carb to style.

I guess infection could be possible, but could a wild yeast still have anything to live off in a bottle after 10 months?? I have a video of one of the beers that's larger than the attachment size allowed unfortunately, but it's bubbling so violently the bubbles are bouncing 3/4 of an inch off the underside of the head.

 

[MichaelBrock]

That's a real mystery then. It certainly sounds like you are doing things correctly. It just sounds sort of impossible If the beer is truly fully attenuated when you bottle it (i.e. the yeast you used has fermented out all of the sugar it is able to) then when you bottle it all of the sugar it can further ferment for carbonation is the priming sugar. There isn't any way it will take yeast "months" to ferment out the priming sugar, especially if you're adding the appropriate amount of sugar. So I have no idea!