Bottled possible stuck fermentation/ bottle bomb worry

[TkmLinus]

Greetings, looking for some newbie help/advice here.

I brewed a 5 gallon batch of Zombie Dirt from NB, used S-04 yeast. I brewed according to directions on 10/20/18. Checked gravity with refractometer and it was at 13.2 Brix (1.053 gravity). Let ferment at 68 degrees for 2 weeks. Dry hopped in primary, let sit at room temp (75 degrees) for one more week. Bottled on 11/10/18 with 207 g of honey for priming sugar. I checked my gravity from the non-primed beer after bottling and it was at 8.8 Brix(1.023 gravity). Seemed rather high, I set the small sample aside in a sealed mason jar and checked today, it was at 8 Brix(1.018 gravity). I went to check from one of the sealed bottles today(48 hours later), it was a gusher and was also at 8 Brix.

To my question, do I have a batch of bottle bombs now? Or should I not worry? Or should I pour the beer back into the carboy for a little longer. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[balrog]

<edited for stupidity> I see you corrected for alc present. Sorry.

 

[Miraculix]

How did you mix the honey with the beer before botteling?

 

[piojo]

Why not bleed the caps a little to find out? You can do it without ruining the seal if you pry them gently.

If they aren't gushers and you have safety goggles, leather gloves, a large pot, and a thermometer, you can pasteurize them by heating in hot water to 60-65°C. They don't need to be completely covered in water, but you should soak them longer if not.

If they are gushers, you will need to bleed them many times before they are safe to pasteurize. Even when they're safe, they're never totally safe, hence the hand and eye protection.

 

[TkmLinus]

How did you mix the honey with the beer before botteling?

I warmed up 1 cup of water, mixed in the honey and mixed till it was suspended. Then poured the solution in the bottom of my bottling bucket before mixing in the beer.

 

[JimRausch]

Chill them immediately to slow down any further fermentation. That's the absolute 1st thing to do. Then you can experiment with how to mediate your problem. One possibility is as piojo suggests above. Another might be the cooler pasteurization method. However, if you dump them all back into the carboy, you will oxidize and ruin them, so that's not a good option. Good luck!

 

[TkmLinus]

So this sounds like I should be concerned. I saw this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/high-carbonation-4-days-after-bottling.370296/ mentioning that gushers were normal this early after bottling. I don't want to jump the gun in case the fermentation just stopped at the high gravity. I do have some coolers that I can store the bottles in, in case they get overcarbonated, or is that just a recipe for disaster? Thanks again!

 

[Calder]

Did you run adjust the refrac number of alcohol. You may know this, but there seems to be a lot of people who don't, but refractometers are pretty good for OG measurements, but when checking fermented beers, the reading is incorrect ..... well it reads what it reads, but does not provide an accurate reading of gravity. The alcohol messes up the result.

But ..... many people have dedicated a lot of time in measuring both unfermented and fermented beer with refractometers and hydrometers and have created calculators from empirical data. You can find these on line, and use them to estimate your FG from your measured reading from the refrac. It is empirical data, so no 2 calculators are the same (unless someone copied another one), but they should all be close.

As for gushers. It's getting cold, so use that to store the beers in the garage, deck, or wherever you have that is cold. Cold should stop further fermentation and lessen the 'gush'. Open over sink and pour quick.