So I figured out that I overprimed my beer. It's an apa/ipa that I bottled yesterday. I guess my boil volume was a little off because I ended up with only a hair over 4 gallons, but I didn't find out until I siphoned to the bottling bucket after the sugar-water mixture was already in it. I thought that I had closer to five gallons but alot of foam from transfer from kettle to carboy and very active fermentation requiring a blow off tube left the top of my carboy full of gunk I couldn't see through. I primed just over 4 gallons with 4oz of corn sugar at about 68°. So the question is: how screwed am i?
That would get you a little over 2.7 volumes of CO2. A bit high, but not dangerous, assuming evenly distributed sugar. Bookmark this calculator and you'll be able to answer your own priming questions... http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html?16760133#tag
Would it be possible to check a bottle in say, a week and if it's ready chill all the bottles to stop the yeast from overcarbonating? Just wait until the level of carbonation is to my liking and chill the beer making the yeast go dormant?
No worries, with caveats. I prefer higher carbonation in my beers over lower, so I've fairly routinely primed 5 gallons with 5 oz (weighed with a gram scale to 140g, corn sugar used). They carbonate well, but I haven't had a big problem with bottle bombs. I've had three so far, two were from one batch of coffee stout, and one was a couple days ago, and that was actually primed with slightly less than that. Don't store them forever tho. I drink them pretty quickly, so they rarely get time to explode. If you're really worried store them in a plastic container with a lid till they're ready to chill.
Thanks for all the replies. My wort was finished, gravity was stable for 5 days before bottling. I think I'm going to give it at least 7 days and pop one to see what the carbonation is like and go from there. Cheers!
remember that cold liquid holds more gas than warm liquid. so if you have gushers, chill those bastards to 30 degrees or so before you crack open. won't solve your over priming, but it sure does beat a room full of suds. you probably wont have much luck stopping the bottle refermentation mid cycle. go ahead and try, but don't be surprised if you are off. Cheers.
