Over carbonated bottles

[lambier]

Hey All,

My third all grain batch I made turned out really well. A triple amber with a smokey flavor to it. It's pretty strong somewhere around 10.

Now some bottles I open are over carbonated and some are perfectly fine. The taste is the same and I added the same amount of sugar for the 2nd fermentation/bottling.

Any tips please... I would love to make this beer again and make it even better (was thinking of adding oak chips in the first fermentation).

Thanks,

David

 

[lowtones84]

It's a good idea to let the bottles carbonate for around 3 weeks first of all. After that, it's good to put them in the fridge for at least 2 days to let the Co2 fully dissolve into beer, which happens more easily at colder temperatures.

If you have done all of this, I'm not really sure what the problem might be.

Good luck!

 

[lambier]

The three week I have done, but not the fridge for two days. It's been outside now for three days and the temperature outside is fridge temp so I will try again. Thanks for that tip.

 

[Beer_Eugenics]

Did you gentle stir the priming sugar into the beer before bottling? If not the ones you bottled first might have received more sugar than the ones you bottled last.

 

[sweetcell]

how did you add the priming sugar? maybe it was distributed unevenly in your bottling pail? or did you add sugar directly to each bottle?

 

[lambier]

I added the sugar directly to the bottle.

 

[sweetcell]

how were you measuring the sugar? it can be hard to be precise when spooning it directly into each bottle, because of the small amounts involved.

 

[lambier]

I have these little bags that contain the same amount of sugar. So each bottle had exactly the same amount of sugar.

 

[RM-MN]

Since this is a high alcohol beer the bottles may take longer to carbonate and not every bottle will carbonate at exactly the same rate. Give it more time and see how it turn out.

 

[Revvy]

I have these little bags that contain the same amount of sugar. So each bottle had exactly the same amount of sugar.

You may think so, but I bet if you counted the grains in each bag, you would find out it's not the case, some are going to have more grains that other. Some little bit of mositure got on your spoon or whatever you used to divvy up the sugar and some got a little extra "chunk" and some got shortchanged. Some a few grains didn't make it all the way into the bottles. There's really no way to gaurantee, and those little grains are going to be more or less sugar than the others for the yeast to eat.

The only way really to gaurentee even carbonation is to bulk prime by boiling the sugar up in a couple cups of water and mixing it in the bottling bucket.

 

[Euphist]

The only way really to gaurentee even carbonation is to bulk prime by boiling the sugar up in a couple cups of water and mixing it in the bottling bucket.

I would add to this that bulk priming is easier than putting sugar in each individual bottle, IMHO.