Over carbonated

Hey all,

New home brewer here. I recently Justin made my first batch by Brewers Friend called Scottish Ale. The beer smells delicious, but when I taste it, seems like it’s over carbonated. I sanitized everything twice. Did a primary and secondary termination and used 5oz of priming sugar as it called for. Is there any advice that you guys could give? Thanks!

 

What volume of beer went into the fermenter? 5 gallons?

If so, what was your priming sugar? Corn sugar, table sugar, dme, etc.

Depending on which calculator and sugar you use, 5 oz. could be a lot. I usually bottle 4.75-5 gallons and have usually used 4.5 oz of table sugar at most and that's typically with 5 gallons of beer at bottling.

 

There are two possibilities I can think of. First is that the full packet of priming sugar may have been too much for the quantity of beer that you actually got into the bottles. That would be likely.
The other is that you prefer beers with less carbonation. That can be somewhat mollified by opening the bottle and let is set in the refrigerator for some time to allow some of the CO2 to dissipate.

 

Being your first batch, is it possible you left a lot of beer in the fermenter? If so, it would be over carb'd. Another possibility is poor mixing of the priming solution. This would cause some under carb'd and some over carb'd.

 

What do you mean too much beer in the fermenter?

 

I'm wondering if you had some trouble with the siphon and didn't get it all into the bottling bucket. (Siphoning can be tricky.) If there was less volume in the bottling bucket, then there would be too much priming sugar for the volume.

 

I got it all into the fermenter. Once I got use to the siphon, it was a breeze

 

Forget about the volume in the fermenter. How much beer went into your bottling bucket? 5 gallons? 4.5 gallons? 4 gallons?

Once that amount is known, it will be easier to assess if you used too much priming sugar.

 

It was about 4.5 gallons.

 

Here is a good calculator that you will find useful.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/beer-priming-calculator/

It appears you may have used about 1.0 oz too much priming sugar....

 

I like this one because it gives you a lot more options for different kinds of sugar: https://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator

But yes, too much sugar = overcarbonation.

 

As stated, you used a bit to much priming sugar. For some reason, most companies sell their beer kits with 5.0oz of priming sugar and neglect to mention that you need to actually calculate out how much you need for the style of beer and the amount you have in the bottling bucket. Both previously suggested priming sugar calculators are excellent, but I've always found this great as well http://www.brewunited.com/priming_sugar_calculator.php

The cool thing is..DUDE (or DUDETTE, no bias here) you have beer! You can let it sit for a little longer than normal to off-gas. I"m sure there are some enterprising brewers on here that have suggestions on offgassing bottles a bit. Hope it turns out awesome! Cheers!

 

I also over-carbed my last batch, using too much priming sugar for the amount of beer in the fermenter. I got all bottles into the fridge quickly and have been slowly working my way through the batch. If yours are over-carbed due to too much sugar there's probably not much you can easily do. What I've been doing with my batch is to open the bottle and pour the beer into a glass and let it sit for 5-10 minutes for the CO2 to settle out a bit. After that amount of time it's not too much of an issue.

 

Seconding the putting all of them into the fridge option.

After a few days they get a bit better and you can slowly pour a small beer so there is room for the foam to come up but not spill out, and when it goes down you pour another.

Though the higher the amount of carbonation the higher amount of bottle true that will be knocked loose into the second pour.