I was all set to bottle an imp stout in my Belgian bottles today when I found out the "Belgian" capper ordered from my LHBS didn't work at all. It forced two caps on and then broke the neck off of the third. At that point I decided to go with regular bottles. Found my caps and their were seven. On to what I saw as my only third option was to sanitize a keg real quick and keg the bastard. So I put 4.5 gallons in the keg with 3.5oz of priming sugar that I had added to bottle. I put ten pounds of pressure on the keg to seal it up. I'm sure in a couple of weeks this thing is going to be way over carbed. Any suggestions on ways to mitigate thks or should I just let it carb and then bleed the keg till it degasses a bit? Thanks!
I'm not sure this will be way over carbed. Your headspace is modest and the 10 psi to hold a seal isn't a tremendous volume of CO2. I would worry about the beer absorbing the initial shot of CO2, lowering the headspace pressure, and losing the seal before the keg-carbing takes off. Ideally you would have a pressure gauge on the output post to monitor what's going on. Even if you end up with too many bubbles it's no great effort to release some gas. I would monitor the seal and chill.
I'd keep it at room temp til the sugar is eaten, then bleed it down a bit and re- force carbonate it up to your desired level (force carb). Then bottle with a beer gun. If you don't want to wait or don't have a beer gun then just bottle it now. If it hasn't been sitting at 10psi for long it shouldn't have absorbed any significant CO2.
My rule of thumb for 5 UK ( that is 6 US gallons) in a cask was to use 3 ounces of sugar with no force pressure. Easily enough to dispense all the contents.
