Too much air space in bottles

[DeathBrewer]

A friend of mine bottled his brew and only filled up to the neck of the bottle, leaving over 2" of space in there. what will happen with this beer? over/undercarbonation?

He's not real new to this, just hadn't done it in a while and didn't bother to call me kinda upset me since i helped him make it and everything was cool until he screwed this up.

i just want to let him know how it will affect his beer...

 

[Evan!]

A friend of mine bottled his brew and only filled up to the neck of the bottle, leaving over 2" of space in there. what will happen with this beer? over/undercarbonation?

He's not real new to this, just hadn't done it in a while and didn't bother to call me kinda upset me since i helped him make it and everything was cool until he screwed this up.

i just want to let him know how it will affect his beer...

They may end up undercarbonated, or not carbonated at all, because there's enough air space for the co2 produced by bottle fermentation to lay around in without infusing itself into the beer itself. He may also get gushers, due to the excess oxygen in there, at least I've heard rumors about such things. Whenever I underfill bottles (usually it's the last bottle and I don't get a full fill, and I just use that bottle to gauge fermentation), it ends up uncarbonated or undercarbonated.

 

[DeathBrewer]

we tried one of these out yesterday. it was undercarbonated, but still damn good. weird, it was a hoegaarden clone but turned out to taste and look like a dunkel oh well, we're happy!

 

[Archer Troy]

So how far should up the neck should i fill it when bottling?

 

[fritz_monroe]

Do you use a bottling wand? If so, fill the bottle until the beer is level with the mouth of the bottle. Pull the bottling wand out and the level will drop to where it needs to be. Cap away.

 

[Archer Troy]

Ah. Thanks. The answer is always simpler than i think it is.