Bottle for six month aging

[Toby2]

Sometime in the next thirty to ninety days, I'm planning to brew three five gallon batches of stout for Octoberfest, Thanksgiving & Christmas. I want to bottle it and store it till use. The problem I have is over carbonation. I brewed some stouts in October and November of last year and almost everyone I open overflows out of the bottle. Back then, I was using 3/4 of a cup of corn starch. At present, I'm using 1/2 cup of honey.

Any ideas or suggests to prevent the overflowing bottles?

 

[BeerPressure]

Foaming bottles could be due to infection and not over carbonation

 

[SumnerH]

Foaming bottles could be due to infection and not over carbonation

Yep.

Corn starch won't carb, I presume you meant corn sugar--you're really much better off measuring by weight. Volume measures are pretty unreliable.

With honey, the amount to use is going to vary by the sugar content of the honey (different from jar to jar); I'd avoid it for bottling because of that. But you can use it with a little work: you should dilute a portion in water and measure the gravity, then calculate the amount needed from there.

 

[Toby2]

Foaming bottles could be due to infection and not over carbonation

Is there any way to tell if it is an infection? Also, I've been drinking them and they taste great. Additionally, I meant corn sugar.

 

[Clonefarmer]

Is there any way to tell if it is an infection? Also, I've been drinking them and they taste great. Additionally, I meant corn sugar.

Time won't add carbonation only fermentable sugars or infections that eat unfermentable sugars can add carbonation. If it tastes good there probably isn't an infection.

The sugar may have gotten packed down while measuring in volumes. Which could lead to over carbonation.

 

[tallybrewer]

If bottled too early, it may have continued fermentation when bottled...

 

[ChshreCat]

+1 on most all said. Make doubly sure the beer is done fermenting and stable before bottling and measure your priming sugar by weight and not volume to get a more accurate measurement.

 

[Toby2]

Thanks all.

I hadn't thought about it, but these were early batches in my brewing and I very well may have bottled them to early. They were very heavy beers too, so they may have finished fermenting in the bottle. As for the packed Corn Sugar, that's possible and I'll switch to weight on the long storage batches.