I would just drink it.
People have mentioned, though I haven't experienced it, that too much headspace may cause the bottle to blow up.
I often end up with a 1/2 bottle or just a few ounces left over. I just drink it. Sometimes flat green beer can be enjoyable.
Not to start an argument with Revvy, but I have done that a couple of times with 2/3 filled bottles and it was fine.
Not something I would plan on storing for any length of time, but fine to carb up and drink.
I take the road less travelled. I top up that last bottle with tapwater. (I mark it and set it aside tho...)
Not a bad idea!! I'm going to give this a try this weekend. Just bottled another batch of wit last night and ended up with a 3/4 leftover bottle. I have to smoke up 30lbs of pork butt on Saturday for a party anyways so looks like I'll give one of the butts a soak.I cap my halvsies and immediately chill them for a week or so and the use it in meat brine. I generally smoke 10+ pounds of meat on brew days and I brine most of that for a few days beforehand and a little alcohol helps break down connective tissues.
When our little yeasties are eating sugar and there's oxygen they release CO2, when that oxygen is depleted they go into anaerobic respiration and turn sugar into alcohol... So if you have more oxygen in your bottles that makes the yeast produce more CO2, which can lead to beer bottles exploding... be careful...
This doesn't seem right. Everything that I've read points solely to the amount of sugar being the determining factor in carbonation.
I've short-filled several bottles with no harm, even with some unintentional extended aging.
This doesn't seem right. Everything that I've read points solely to the amount of sugar being the determining factor in carbonation.
I've short-filled several bottles with no harm, even with some unintentional extended aging.
Oh no, there is more to it than that... you may not think of it when you are bottle conditioning your beer, but once you get into artificial carbonation methods (i.e. kegs) you'll discover a whole new world...
Pressure, time and temperature...
Here's the deal... yeast turns sugar into CO2 when there is oxygen and alcohol when there isn't oxygen... this is true whether you are fermenting your beer or bottle conditioning...
If you are not bottle conditioning you'll have to add CO2 and pressurize your kegs...
With bottle conditioning, the yeast gives you the CO2 and by capping your bottles you essentially pressurize your bottles...
Even when you are fermenting pressure builds up in the bucket/carboy, but it escapes through the airlock so you get flat beer when it's done fermenting...
When you bottle condition you add sugar or malt (they are both sugars) to get the yeast to produce CO2 again and pressure builds up in the bottle. At first the CO2 is in the head space, but with time it dissolves back into the beer (which is why you have to wait 2-4 weeks) and that's how you carbonate beer...
I have bottled beer with lots of head space and just like you, nothing happened, but that's because the amounts of sugar and temperature weren't a levels that would cause over-carbonation... In fact it would have to be an extreme case for beer bottles to explode by this factor, but it is possible given the right conditions, and I'm just explaining why it would happen, if it does happen...
What's still not fully clear to me, even with the last two attempts at explaining it, is how yeast could produce excessive amounts of CO2 when you only give them enough sugar to eat to properly carbonate a bottle, based solely on additional oxygen in the bottle.
Is it a case of the additional oxygen along with the proper amount of sugar revives the yeast enough to have them eat some of the sugars they didn't eat the first time before going dormant? Kind of like adding champagne yeast to get a lower FG after your original yeast pooped out? I have to note, that this doesn't seem very logical to me. If you accidentally oxidize your beer during bottling, wouldn't that be adding an equivalent amount of oxygen as leaving a larger headspace, which would lead to the same scenario that carnevoodoo and beerjorge seem to be describing?
I'm not sure how else I can explain this... yeast metabolize sugar using aerobic respiration when there is oxygen around and produce 6 molecules of CO2 when this happens. When there is no oxygen around, they turn to anaerobic respiration where they metabolize sugar by turning it into one molecule of CO2 and ethanol.
If you oxidize your beer you would Not be adding an equivalent amount of oxygen as leaving a larger headspace because you can't fit the same amount of oxygen in liquid as you can in air...
Since the headspace is the primary source of oxygen, the best practice is to reduce that headspace by filling your bottles all the way up to the rim.
This would make sense if the oxygen in the headspace were the limiting factor during bottle conditioning. Since I can prime with different amounts of sugar to get different levels of carbonation, it would appear to me that this is not the case (at least at lower, normal, sugar amounts). Therefore, the amount of sugar must be limiting the amount of CO2 produced. Do I have that right?I'm not sure how else I can explain this... yeast metabolize sugar using aerobic respiration when there is oxygen around and produce 6 molecules of CO2 when this happens. When there is no oxygen around, they turn to anaerobic respiration where they metabolize sugar by turning it into one molecule of CO2 and ethanol.
If you oxidize your beer you would Not be adding an equivalent amount of oxygen as leaving a larger headspace because you can't fit the same amount of oxygen in liquid as you can in air...
Since the headspace is the primary source of oxygen, the best practice is to reduce that headspace by filling your bottles all the way up to the rim.
This would make sense if the oxygen in the headspace were the limiting factor during bottle conditioning. Since I can prime with different amounts of sugar to get different levels of carbonation, it would appear to me that this is not the case (at least at lower, normal, sugar amounts). Therefore, the amount of sugar must be limiting the amount of CO2 produced. Do I have that right?
Anyway - I cap and save my halvsies as early sacrificial tests too.
Just bottled a batch of American Wheat. The last bottle is only ~2/3 filled. Is it OK to cap and carb it? Or should I just dump it?
Recommendation: put your whole batch in a large plastic bag (or bags)
I'm away on business and now you've got my worrying about the batch conditioning in my garage (first batch). That said, I filled to the top on every bottle (which leaves just a tiny bit of headroom when the wand is removed), which is I think the right thing?
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