Over-carbed bottles with WLP 029

[Jayfro21]

Hi all,

So I have a problem that I've never had before in around 50 batches. I brewed BM Helles Belles with WJP 029 Kolsch yeast and than threw the recipe for Punk'toberfest on the yeast cake. I brew 2.5 gallon batches and bottle with corn sugar for priming. I weigh everything in grams and haven't had an over-carb problem before using online priming sugar calculators. However, both of the above-mentioned bottles were over-carbed and gushers. The following things could have happened:

1) Infection: possible, but both tasted fantastic out of primary before bottling, and both taste good after carbing albeit with a carbonic bite.
2) Inaccurate measurement of corn sugar: possible, and my ability to measure volumes is not great, but I doubt the difference between 2.25 and 2.5 gallons would make such a huge difference
3) Not finished fermenting: I'm leaning towards this as I have not used this yeast before and I know it's slow. Fermentation temps were around 62-65, and the Helles was in primary 11 days and the Punk'toberfest something like 15 days. FG on both were right around what the recipe called for. I rarely take consecutive gravity readings because I usually just let it go for awhile in primary.

What do you guys think? And more importantly, what can I do to rectify the situation? I'm thinking I'll probably just open a bunch into a pitcher and put it in the fridge before serving to gas off come CO2 and to keep at serving temperature. Anyways, thanks for looking and any insights!

- Jason

 

[BigMack]

Couple questions:

Have you brewed with that yeast strain before?

What temp did you start and end fermentation at?

What temp are you bottle conditioning at?

 

[Jayfro21]

Couple questions:

Have you brewed with that yeast strain before?

What temp did you start and end fermentation at?

What temp are you bottle conditioning at?

1) I have never brewed with that yeast before
2) Fermentation started around 62 for around a week, than let it get to low to mid-70's after krausen dropped
3) Bottle conditioning around 75

 

[BigMack]

I've had a similar situation with a belgian that I brewed a while back. It tasted fine, should only have been carbed to about 3 volumes of CO2, but every single one turned into a bit of a gusher. It wasn't until they'd been bottled for months that some off flavors crept in that made me think I had an infection going on.

I would say with yours its either incomplete fermentation like you said (my first thought as well), or a similar situation to mine. I would try letting the next batch sit in the fermenter a bit longer at whatever temperature you plan on bottling condition at to see if the yeast is still doing its thing on the initial fermentation. If that doesn't help I would say you've probably got some wild yeast swimming around in there.

 

[Jayfro21]

As an update, I poured two bottles into a big beer pitcher and than pit it into the fridge to stay at serving temperature and to let the CO2 off-gas. The beer tasted clean and cleared pretty well. I am thinking now that it is not an infection and more likely bottling too early with a yeast that is notoriously slow. I will do the same with the pumpkin beer this week and see what happens...