Over Priming-Potential Bottle Bombs? HELP

[rb2112]

Hi- I'm somewhat new to brewing 5 gal batches and may have created a disaster. I brewed a Sierra Nevada Clone-1.060 OG and 1.012 FG. The FG was stable for over a week-had it in primary for 3 weeks then bottled. I normally use hop sacks, but for this batch I just added all of the hops directly to the boil. So, I added 5oz of corn sugar boiled in 2 cups of water to prime-then racked the beer to the bottling bucket. My problem was towards the end of the racking I tipped the bucket to get as clear as beer as I could and accidentally jerked the primary and all the hops and yeast turned into a cloudy mess. I stopped racking the beer (I should have just continued to rack the cloudy mess) and ended up with only 42 12oz bottles for a 5 gal batch. The beer was approximately 70 degrees when bottled, in 12 oz brown beer bottles you buy at the LHBS. WILL I HAVE bottle bombs or just extremely over carbonated beer. I wrapped the cardboard cases of beer in heavy duty black glad trash bags and also put them in rubbermaid containers in case the bottles explode. They are in a room at 70 degrees temp. now. Thanks for your help! Rob B

 

[ong]

I'm still pretty new to this, too, but that sounds like you're only down about half a gallon from where you should have been (assuming you'd normally leave half a gallon in the fermentor). Doesn't seem to me like it should be much of an issue. If you try a bottle and it's getting more carbonated than you like, you could move them into the fridge to slow/halt the process.

 

[sidepart]

Relax, you're fine. 5oz of corn sugar usually only nets you around 2.6-3.0 Vols of CO2 and is generally a safe bet...you can probably push your LHBS bottle to 3.6 volumes. Even though you only primed 4 gallons, you'd still need 6oz of corn sugar to reach 3.6.

That said, bottle bombs are always a possibility but pretty unlikely in your case. Sometimes bottles just suck, or the seal isn't good, or if there's an infection it could occur too. Just keep them in separate so if they blow, they don't make a huge mess. If you keep them under 70 degrees, it'll carbonate less hard. If for some reason one of them does blow, vent your other bottles (carefully lift the cap a tad, but don't bend it, use gardening gloves and some eye goggles to be safe, etc etc.) and re-cap. I only speak from my own experience where I tried to prime a Hefeweizen for 4 vols of CO2. No bottle bombs luckily, but I did vent my bottles 2 days after bottling day. Worked great.

I usually end up a few bottles short. I think my first brew only had 42ish bottles...so not bad.

 

[BronxBrew]

One neat trick I read was to have 1 plastic bottle on hand. Fill the plastic screw cap bottle during bottling. This way you can squeeze it to check for carbonation during the cure.

 

[hepcat]

I think a visual inspection of sediment in the bottle would be a good an indicator of carb activity.

 

[duboman]

You'll be fine, they will most likely not be that over carbonated as you were just a few bottles under the average for a 5 gallon batch as the amount of bottles you generate are usually less than the full 5 gallons and 1oz of sugar per gallon is an average norm. They might be a little overcarbonated so next time you might want to try one of the various priming calculators next time to more accurate and to style.

 

[KISS Brew]

According to BeerSmith, you'll be right around 3.2-3.3 volumes of CO2. I've read that under 3.5 volumes of CO2 is perfectly safe with normal 12oz beer bottles, and 4 volumes is usually okay (but probably pushing it).

In other words, RDWHAHB. There will be no bottle bombs.