Hi friends Couldn't find this specific question asked before.. My first homebrew came out over carbonated, and I'm trying to avoid that with my second batch - which I brewed today. I believe that my last batch was over carbonated due to the fact that I had to add some water to the wort after my boil, yet did not reduce the amount of honey I was using. Does this sound like it could be a cause for over carbonation? If so, I'm wondering how to calculate how much sugar (corn) to use for this batch: Brewed a Belgian Ale - 1 gallon(Belgian Bombshell from the homebrew association website). I'm shooting for a carbonation level of 2.3, temp of 68F. The priming sugar calculator says I should use .78oz sugar. I had to add about 2.5 cups of water to the wort to bring it to the 1 gallon mark. My question is how much (if any) should I reduce the sugar by? If I reduce the amount of sugar I also assume I'd need to reduce the amount of boiling water it goes in too, right? Thanks!
If you have calculated your priming sugar exactly for your batch and still ended up with over-carbonated bottles then the only cause that you need to look at is whether fermentation was actually complete before you started the bottling process. Incomplete fermentation combined with the priming sugar produces too much CO2. Using a hydrometer to take a couple readings over several days until the readings are the same is the only way to determine if fermentation is finished. You cannot rely upon cessation of bubbles in the airlock. Adding extra water had nothing to do with this problem.
I agree with Mothergoose on this except for one other possibility: an infection of some sort in your bottles might have been chewing away at sugars that yeast cells can’t digest. Look up “gusher bug” for more info on that.
yea, i'd thought it might have been a gusher infection, but did sanitize pretty well. i didn't have a hydrometer for my first batch, but did get one for this one. i'll definitely make sure fermentation is done before bottling. also gonna look up this gusher bug and hope to avoid it
An infection will also make itself known by affecting the taste of the beer. If it otherwise tasted good, I would put my money down on an incomplete fermentation. I eventually found out that was my problem when I monitored the temperature in my basement and realized it was getting too cold and slowing things down to the point where I thought a beer would be finished, but it really wasn't. Then it would over-prime the bottles, which I put in a warmer place to carbonate for the first couple of weeks after bottling.
What kind of flavors was it giving you. Mine tasted alright (not great) to me, the only off taste was that a some of the bottles i opened earlier seemed seemed to have like a lemon seltzer water flavor. The bottles i opened recently though didn't have that taste as much. i did vent and recap most of my bottles too after i saw the first one gush
The only infection I have ever tasted was from a bottled beer from a regional brewery. It was very harsh, sour, bitter, and foamed over like crazy.
