Am I sitting on a batch of potential bottle bombs?

[cayslayer]

Sooo.. We just bottled a porter that, in hindsight, is almost certainly underfermented. The wort was barely aerated and the yeast (wyeast 1187) was a smack pack that didn't inflate.
The lag time was long- 2 days until we saw any signs, then chugged along alright for 3 or 4 days, racked to secondary when the airlock stopped bubbling, then sat for another 8 days and bottled.
We missed our OG and corrected it with DME, but completely forgot to take a reading afterward, so we aren't sure what it is- though we were aiming for 1.047 and hopefully came near to that. The FG was 1.020, which was super disappointing, and is what is now terrifying me. Would it be safe to say that I'm gonna have some explosions with this batch? Has anyone else made a similar mistake?

 

[sboyajian]

Honestly, it's hard to say. 6 days in the primary to me doesn't seem like enough and airlock activity isn't really the best sign of determining fermentation activity. Was it 1.020 before you racked it or after the additional 8 days in secondary?

You really shouldn't be moving to a secondary until you've reached your FG. With 1.047, 6 days may have been enough, but you should probably take a reading and then come back in 2 days and take another one. If you were still at 1.020, you can rack it, my guess is it probably would have gone lower.

That being said, if you moved it to the secondary when it still had that much sugar, I'd be worried about the health of the yeast that did make it to the secondary and continued to work for 8 days.

 

[adiochiro3]

Many have made these mistakes. What you really need to know is whether the FG is stable. Open a bottle and measure the gravity. Put the beer back in the bottle and recap and measure the same bottle tomorrow and again on Wednesday. If it is the same all 3 days, your good. If not, you may have problems. If fermentation is ongoing, you can open the batch and recap in a week or so to relieve pressure.

 

[flars]

After one week of bottling conditioning, at warm room temperature, open a bottle to check for over carbonation. Pour a hydrometer sample, let it go flat, and take a SG reading. If the SG has dropped, fermentation is continuing.
Continuing fermentation means you will have a problem as more CO2 is produced.

 

[mrgrimm101]

Sorry I don't have any advice for your current issue, but here are a couple things to think about for next time.

IMO, next time let it sit in primary for 2-3 weeks. Don't rely on the airlock to tell you when fermentation is complete. It should be very active during the first week and will be much less active (if at all) during the 2nd and 3rd week, but there is most likely still activity taking place. 2 weeks from brew day to bottles is way too short. Again, this is just my opinion.

Racking to secondary isn't necessary (it's an ongoing debate and is pretty much a brewers personal preference), and it can potentially halt fermenation if you transfer before you hit your FG.

 

[fatcop]

Yes, you are. Do you like the taste at 1.020? If you do, put them in a fridge at 33f or as cold as you possibly could without freezing. To give you an idea, I have a beer that stalled at 1.020 and no matter what I did I couldn't get it to ferment any lower. Finally I transferred to secondary and that started it up again no problem! It has still been fermenting for the last 12 days. Porters can be a little higher FG and still taste pretty good though, so I would move the bottles to the fridge and drink them fast.

 

[andy6026]

the only way to tell now is to open a bottle and find out.

Open it in the sink, and if it foams out then you've over-carbed.

If you have overcarbed then get the rest of the bottles cold right away - whack them all in the fridge.

Leave them in there for about 3-5 days. This will help keep a lot of the carbonation in the solution and help avoid or minimize the rest foaming out in the next step below.

After that, open each one and re-cap it. Do one at a time and try to recap it right after you open it. If you get the caps back on without losing any beer (it can gush out), then the batch will still be decent. If they foam out then you can lose lose quite a bit of beer, and the beer that does remain isn't as good (it will acquire an off-taste that could be oxidization).