This might be a stupid question

[brockchance]

After bottles have conditioned and carbed to your liking to you have to chill them to stop carbonation or can they just sit at room temp. I've never had this problem before because I always have done small batch and drank them right away but 5gals might not go so fast

 

[day_trippr]

You cannot count on cold to inhibit yeast from consuming available sugars.
Hence the "bottle grenade" paradigm is always in play if you overdose the bottles with primer...

Cheers!

 

[brockchance]

So as long as I don't over prime them I'm fine? I'm going to LA for 3 weeks on business and am having a buddy watch over my brewery lol

 

[Singletrack]

You can let them sit at room temp after they are fully carbonated. For hoppy beers, the hop flavor/aroma may fade a bit faster at room temp, so I try to get them in the fridge if possible. (I have an embarrassing number of refrigerators.)


But no, you should not rely on the fridge to prevent yeast from over-carbonating.

 

[beergolf]

The yeast can only eat the fermentables that are available. So if the brew was done fermenting and you added the correct amount of priming sugar, the yeast can only eat that amount of sugar. So you can store you bottles with no issues of overcarbing.

I brew a lot of Belgians and have some bottles that are over 5 years old, and are still perfectly carbed.

 

[ncbrewer]

So if the brew was done fermenting

If it's done fermenting is really important. Be sure it's finished by checking gravity twice, 2 - 3 days apart. If it's dropped, it's not done.

 

[ChuckO]

If you are really in doubt about bottle bombs, let the bottles finish carbonating while sitting in a Rubbermade tub with a lid on. You can store an entire 5 gal. batch in two of them with no fear of mess.