Help... Too much sugar in bottle

My initial thought is to let the bottles carb up for a 5-7 days and then try one to see if the carbonation is where you want it to be. If not let it go a few more days and try another bottle. Once you are close to the desired level of carbonation, put the bottles in the fridge and do not let them get warm again. By keeping the bottles cold until consumption, the yeast will go dormant and will not consume the remaining sugar. You still may end up with slightly overcarbonated bottles over time but this method should at least keep them drinkable.

If you allow all of the sugar to be consumed I would certainly be concerned about bottle bombs.

 

F'd.

ProTip: Bottle bombs are not cliché.

 

I wouldnt risk it. I have had bottle bombs, they arent a cliche or a joke. They will take fingers off.

 

An alternate to Mohican88's suggestion is to uncap them, put a small amount of aluminum foil over each bottle for 5-7 days in a warm spot to allow CO2 to escape during the refermentation, then recap them. It's risky because you don't have any precise knowledge about the CO2 level and you could still end up with bottle bombs, but it sounds like you know that already. With only 2.5 gallons of beer, chill 'em and drink them fast.

 

Very very dangerous. Seriously. You should NOT just refrigerate these and hope for the best. I've been there, done that. They are very dangerous. Pop them all now and let it ferment out, then re-bottle. It's the only way to prevent serious bombs. Seriously.

 

2.5 gallons of bottle bomb beers?

I'd dump them before they fully carbonate.

 

Easy there. What was your style, your desired CO2 and your weight of sugar?

If this were me with the given info above, I do something like this.

After about 3 days, I'd drink 1 a day until you hit your desired carb level. You need to fit a case of beer into a fridge to stop the yeast. This will work. It's not a drain pour so long as you stop the yeast. Just don't leave these bottles out for too long and be safe if things get unruly.

 

Contrary to common belief, yeast will continue to ferment in the refrigerator.

 

Just take the caps off , cover with foil, let them ferment out, then re-dose and re-cap if you want to save the batch. If you are using an aggressive yeast like nottingham or similar then it will make mincemeat of your priming sugar and you will have bottle bombs from day 2.

 

I bottle condition a number of different beer styles, both very low carbonation and very high carbonation, depending on what the style calls for. I have noticed that my beers carbonated low, say 2 volumes or lower, use almost exactly half the sugar as my highly carbonated sours (3-3.5 volumes) at the same bottling temperature.

What I did not see right offhand in the question was what is your initial planned carbonation level? If you go back to whatever calculator you used and re-calculate using the amount of sugar you actually used, you may (MAYBE) find yourself below the threshold of pain. I have carbonated a standard 12 oz bottle to 3.5 volumes when bottling a lambic style ale. Not the preferred bottle, of course, but as a "taster" bottle, it did not explode and was consumed before any of the 750s I used for most of the batch.

Which is all a long-winded way of suggesting you refer to an online calculator, even if you didn't initially do so, and calculate how carbonated the beers are going to become with the amount of sugar/volume of beer you actually used. If you find it going past 3.5 volumes, and you don't have strong, thick walled glass bottles designed for higher carbonation, then try some form of remediation as suggested by other helpful folks here.

 

This just happened to a buddy of mine's cherry imp stout. I don't think the yeast had finished eating all the cherry sugars, and the priming sugar definitely didn't help. He was having gushers after a week. (overcarbed, not the infected gushers). I also had the priviledge of acquiring one of these beers, and it's always scary - like handling a live grenade. He ended up opening all of the beers, letting them vent out, and then ever so slowly poured them back into the bottling bucket. Re-bottled, but lost about 1/3 of his beer. Thankfully you only did a 2.5 gal batch. You can always brew up another batch and pitch these.

I've had bottle bombs before, and they literally ripped the cardboard case they were sitting in. I don't want to know what those would do to human flesh. Just sayin...

 

As others had said I would uncap all the bottles and cover them with foil, let yeast referment for 20 days allowing Co2 to escape.Then you can drain pour just a sip of each bottle to make room for a new CORRECT priming sugar and recap. Any introduced oxygen will be eliminated by yeast .

 

Some will, but not all.

 

Why not?

 

See this discussion...
http://www.beeradvocate.com/communi...g-bucket-than-after-2-weeks-in-bottle.150861/

 

I would go with this approach. It won't guarantee no bottle bombs but chances are you wont have excessive carbonation in your fridge (and yes, I agree that the cold temps won't completely stop refermentation). Obviously requires the fridge space and some willingness for the off-chance of a messy cleanup. If I took the caps off for a few days, the risk of oxygenation just seems too high.

 

Oxidation is one thing. Explosive glass bottles is another.

 

My point was that minimal risk of physical harm from a bottle bomb is outweighed by guaranteed risk of oxidation. At the end of the day, if you don't want the bottle bomb risk at all, you should probably default to dumping this batch.