Not your average bottle bomb question

[gr8shandini]

Here's the story. A local brewpub wants to add a honey wheat to their lineup so they're holding a one-style homebrew competition. Winner gets to brew a batch of their recipe on the brewpub's equipment and gets credit as a "guest brewer" on the menu. Last day to submit entries is Monday. Trouble is that I only found out about it last Monday, so I did an emergency brew session Monday evening hoping to squeak out an entry.

Fast forward to today: So I pop the top on my fermenter to get a gravity sample and, to my surprise, the krausen is just now starting to fall back into the beer (normally, my ales are done in 4 days). Took a reading anyway. OG was 1.048 and "FG" is 1.007. My original plan was to crash cool today, keg and force carb tomorrow and bottle from the keg tomorrow or Monday.

New plan is pretty much the same, but to force carb to a lower volume to try to account for any residual fermentation that might take place between Monday and the judging. If I do this, am I risking handing in a bottle bomb? Bear in mind that I'm not adding any kind of priming sugar.

PS. Would the "minimum month long primary" crowd please save it on this one. I know a week is a pretty sporty time frame to turn around a beer, but that's the time I have. I'd rather not have 50 replies that all say "OMG, green beer!" I'll leave that up to the judges.

 

[Clann]

If your gravity is down to 1.007 then it is most likley done. I wouldnt worry about bottle bombs expecially if there is no priming sugar.

And I wont say anything about 1 week being to early.

 

[rycov]

i don't know. What was your expected FG? 1.007 is pretty low, i doubt you get much lower than that. plus if you cold crash, keg and keep them cold there is probably not gonna be much action anyway. i'd probably give it a shot. just keep it cold after you bottle, just in case. did you taste it yet?

 

[gr8shandini]

Yeah, I think it's pretty much done. I've gotten as low as 1.004 on similar beers, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this one will follow suit.

As for taste, it seems OK. No glaring off flavors anyway, but there's obviously a lot of yeast still in suspension right now. I'll give it another taste after the cold crash and see if I even have a contender or not.

 

[SD-SLIM]

Here's the story. A local brewpub wants to add a honey wheat to their lineup so they're holding a one-style homebrew competition. Winner gets to brew a batch of their recipe on the brewpub's equipment and gets credit as a "guest brewer" on the menu. Last day to submit entries is Monday. Trouble is that I only found out about it last Monday, so I did an emergency brew session Monday evening hoping to squeak out an entry.

Fast forward to today: So I pop the top on my fermenter to get a gravity sample and, to my surprise, the krausen is just now starting to fall back into the beer (normally, my ales are done in 4 days). Took a reading anyway. OG was 1.048 and "FG" is 1.007. My original plan was to crash cool today, keg and force carb tomorrow and bottle from the keg tomorrow or Monday.

New plan is pretty much the same, but to force carb to a lower volume to try to account for any residual fermentation that might take place between Monday and the judging. If I do this, am I risking handing in a bottle bomb? Bear in mind that I'm not adding any kind of priming sugar.

PS. Would the "minimum month long primary" crowd please save it on this one. I know a week is a pretty sporty time frame to turn around a beer, but that's the time I have. I'd rather not have 50 replies that all say "OMG, green beer!" I'll leave that up to the judges.

I dont think you have to worry about a bottle bomb, especially if you are using a beer gun or a counter pressure filler...as you are filling the bottle you will be able to gauge the amount of carbonation based on the amount of foam going in to the bottle, if its too much give it a few seconds before you cap it. The only way I know you can force carb a beer semi accurately in 24 hours is to connect your gas to the out post and crank it up to 30 psi, releasing the pressure valve every couple of hours...and still at that point the beer will be lightly carbonated...but still good enough to put in a bottle. Final though, when you cold crash, is it possible to do that in your keg.....save yourself a step!

 

[gr8shandini]

I haven't tried it yet, but another HBT member mentioned a while back that you can pretty accurately carb a beer in about an hour by setting it to your expected final pressure and shaking the bejeezus out of it. I've done the shake method before at 30 psi, and you're right, it's really easy to over carb.

As for cold crashing in the keg, I thought of that, but since I'll be shaking the hell out of it, I think I'm better off leaving as much yeast as I can in the fermenter. The good part is that it's a wheat, so it's OK if it's cloudy just so long as the yeast doesn't get in the way of the flavor.

 

[SD-SLIM]

I haven't tried it yet, but another HBT member mentioned a while back that you can pretty accurately carb a beer in about an hour by setting it to your expected final pressure and shaking the bejeezus out of it. I've done the shake method before at 30 psi, and you're right, it's really easy to over carb.

As for cold crashing in the keg, I thought of that, but since I'll be shaking the hell out of it, I think I'm better off leaving as much yeast as I can in the fermenter. The good part is that it's a wheat, so it's OK if it's cloudy just so long as the yeast doesn't get in the way of the flavor.

I never ever shake...but thats just me, I have done it in the past with very over carbonated beer...no bueno!
But your in a pinch, so I hope it works out!