Gushing? chocolate stout question

[bernardsmith]

A few weeks ago I brewed a chocolate stout (very small batch) I don't have the recipe to hand but it was two weeks in the fermenter and two weeks bottle conditioned - and primed the gallon with 1 oz of corn sugar before bottling. Two weeks ago I shared some with family (unrefrigerated) and it was fine. Last night I took a bottle from the fridge and opened it and the stout seemed to be very over carbonated and formed a very thick head in the glass as I was pouring it. I put the bottle down and the beer continued to rise out of the bottle. The beer tasted OK. What are the likely causes of this gushing (if that is the right word)?

 

[frazier]

Could be it wasn't done fermenting when you bottled. In which case, it was over-primed, and continued to produce CO2.

Putting it in the fridge causes the CO2 to go into solution - so it foams out of the beer. the unrefrigerated bottle had less in solution.

Finally, 1 ounce sugar per gallon seems just a tad high - probably not enough on its own to cause gushing, but other factors may have been in play.

In other words, there may not be a single cause.

Cheers,

 

[bernardsmith]

I usually prime with 1 oz and have not had any problems. Truth is that I never took a gravity reading before I bottled and just assumed that the two weeks in the fermenter would be long enough given the lack of activity in the airlock. The recipe came from my LHBS and was fairly simple but I cannot say that it tastes any drier today than it tasted two weeks ago but I guess I may not be able to detect such a small difference in sweetness that may result in a drop in gravity of say .001 or .002 over two weeks but that may be enough to create a large enough volume of CO2.