Overcarbed or Green?

[Calistar]

ok, so I have brewed 6 batches, all extract and they all turned out reasonably
well. My latest batch, Northern Brewer, Grapefruit "pulpin", has had some issues. I opened a bottle after 10 days and I was all foam, it also had a sharp taste, and was not good. I waited the rest of the 2 week period, and today....my first bottle bomb. I opened another up and it was also all foam, and still had a very sharp alcohol taste to it.

All of the bottles are in a cooler in my garage now (they were previously in my house, still in the cooler though).

I followed the instructions and bottled into a bucket with the supplied 5 ounces of priming sugar.

I believe my cleaning / sanitation process is sound, but can't say that a few dirty bottles didn't get through.

so far the bad/broken bottles have been 12 ounce bottles that were the last ones to bottle, the first 12 liters of the batch went into 1 liter swing top bottles and whatever was left went into the 12 ounces. The batch was right at 5 gallons, so I believe the sugar was correct.

Could this be "green" beer? I have read about beer needing to age longer to allow the carbonation to get into the beer? If that is the case, I assume the carbonation issue will fix itself if I leave it alone.

Can I open the swing tops for a few seconds, then re-seal them and continue?

Thank you for any input.

Rob

 

[SilverZero]

With bad taste and lots of pressure, I'd lean toward suspecting an infection. Bottles won't foam or explode if they're young, they'd be UNDERcarbed.

Also, "green" isn't the same as "not yet carbonated". "Green" means the beer itself hasn't reached its optimal age, which usually means it wasn't in primary long enough and the yeast didn't finish their metabolism of fermentation byproducts before packaging. Aging during bottling can also help those products get finished off, so waiting for bottles to age doesn't hurt unless you're losing hop aroma to oxidation at the same time - but it won't help overcarbonation go down.

Carbonation happens linearly-ish; the yeast produce CO2 as they're eating the priming sugar, and that CO2 is absorbed into the beer as it is produced. It doesn't "pile up" in the beer and then get absorbed over time, which is what I think you're imagining.

You might also have poor mixing of your priming sugar if only the later bottles are foaming/exploding.

Also, 5oz in 5 gallons (I assume) is up to around 2.7 volumes of CO2 if the temperature at bottling was room temp. That's not absurd, but if you were using old bottles, or if the temp was actually closer to 60F, etc. . . . you might be overcarbing. But I would think infection or uneven concentrations of sugar in some bottles would be much more likely culprits.

 

[Calistar]

ok, thanks for the quick response. I was imagining that if I left it alone for long enough the carbonation would find its way into the beer. I imagine this will be the first batch I have to dump. Not gonna rush it though, I will let them sit here for a few more weeks before I do anything.
rob

 

[BeerAddikt]

In my experience the 5 oz of corn sugar that NB includes in their kits tends to over carbonate most styes. I now buy my corn sugar by the bulk and use between 4-4.5 oz. That said, it sounds more like poor mixing of the sugar in the bottling bucket or an infection.

You may want to check the carbonation of the swing tops that you bottled first. If they're flat then you need to mix the sugar in more thoroughly in the future (I had this happen on one of my first batches).