Why are my IPAs overcarbed?

Over carbonation happens in bottle conditioned beers when you bottle with too much residual sugars. You really have to use a hydrometer, not time, to tell you when to bottle. Shoot for a FG as close to 1.010 as you can get (1.015 for big beers).

Dry hopping might lead to a stuck / slow ferment that in turn leads to too much residual sugar at bottling, but that is an awfully big "might". Racking to a secondary fermenter too soon or poor temperature control are, in my experience, more likely to cause a slow/stuck ferment.

 

Dry hopping, you should be adding the dry hops at a gravity where the beer is nearly ready for bottling, or so I am told.

 

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html?16609224#tag

Usually kits come with 5 ounces of priming sugar which is generally way to much even if you are bottling a full 5 gallons. 2~ volumes of co2 is a typical carbonation for ipa's and if you were bottling 4 gallons 2.44 ounces of corn sugar will get you 2 volumes. That's less than half of the typical 5oz sugar package. So if your not accurately measuring your sugar you may be significantly over carbing.

Another thing to keep in mind is that co2 gas(carbonation) comes out of solution at warmer temperatures faster than it does at colder. If your cracking one of your ipa bottles at say 50-55f as opposed to a 34-37f bottle the beer is gonna appear to be more carbonated than its colder counterpart.

Bottling before fermentation is another possibility as mentioned, and bacterial/wild yeast contamination is possible too.

 

Also dry hopping has no effect on carbonation.

 

What's missing from the OP is 1) how much priming sugar has been added to the bottling bucket and 2) how that amount was determined.

 

Well, it could be that hop absorption is causing you to have less volume of beer to bottle, and if you didn't adjust the amount of priming sugar accordingly, you would wind up with over-carbonated beer.

But it sounds like you were aware that your yield was 4-4.5 gals, so you probably made that adjustment. Or maybe not?

Other than that I can't think of a reason this one style would be different.

 

Long shot, but is there any chance that a high degree of hop matter suspended in solution could be causing a bunch of nucleation points?

OP, get your bottles near frozen, then uncap for a few minutes and re-cap (with a new cap).

 

This is what I came here to say, if you are using pellets, you may want to bag them to reduce the amount that find their way into the bottles.

 

Without knowing the details of your ipa vs. others, hard to tell.

Maybe you are making IPA's higher gravity than the others, not pitching enough yeast, so they are slow to finish and you are bottling before they are completely fermented?

 

Ayou using a hydrometer to check what your O.G is and then before you move to secondary, are you checking for F.G? Could be that it hasn't reached its FG yet, and with extra sugar not yet fermented, is the yeast creating too much carbonation?

 

I generally use 120g ( close to 4,5 oz) per batch, with bottling carboy volume = 4.5 gallons. This is on par with the 5 oz bags of corn sugar that kits frequently provide. Note: I prefer most of my beers on the higher side of carbonation levels, and this might be higher than what your preferences indicate. Also, I make adjustments for bottling volumes significantly different than 4.5 gallons, or for certain styles (I like my stouts with slightly lower carbonation than my IPAs, for instance). I generally have not had problems with over-carbonation, gushers, bottle bombs* etc.

I would make sure of your FG as step 1. Also make sure you are weighing your sugar, get a gram scale if you don't already have one (using a measuring cup is a no-go). Adjust your weight of sugar by volume going into the bottling bucket (lower volume due to hop loss sounds like a possibility for your case). Bottling volume = the amount of liquid that makes it into the bottling bucket, NOT the amount of liquid that was in the fermenter. Make sure you are using the right parameters for the type of sugar you are using too (table sugar is different than corn sugar).

Dry hopping and/or hop debris shouldn't make any difference. I am generally lazy about filtration, and don't care if I could have less hops debris make it into my beers (as there's usually not much anyway), so that's probably not it.

*well ok, that one batch

 

For what it's worth, I've found this priming sugar calculator to be very helpful and accurate. http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/

I'd cross reference your sugar quantities with what's recommended in this calculator, in addition to what others have said about checking your OG and FG prior to bottling.

Also, as AlCaponeJunior mentioned, make sure you are measuring your sugar by weight, not by volume.

 

If you want consistency, don't eyeball your additions. Weigh things as accurately as possible.

 

Most kits that come with priming sugar come with 5oz, and most LHBS also sell 5oz packages of dextrose for priming. I'm guessing that this is a holdover from the old days of homebrewing, and the last thing anyone wants is some crusty old hippy freaking out over being told that you can get proper carbonation for a mild with 3oz of table sugar, depending on a variety of factors, there are several online calculators you can use to determine this, cause he's been using 5oz of corn sugar since before it was legal to do this shit, man, and he's smoked himself ******ed over the years and can't comprehend what temperature has to do with carbonation. And nobody wants to deal with that crap, so they just go by the 5oz pack.

 

I suggest buying a nice 9-12 $ coccaine bailing scale off amazon.
Even drug dealers can't eyeball and their professionals!

 

I have experience the same issue twice before, my records shows that I prime before fermentation finished or in other words "too much residual sugars" in the beer before bottling.
I strongly suggested to use brewing software, measure gravity, use prime beer calculator and prime on time. Even if thanksgiving is comming up and your pumpkin ale is still fermenting. in that case buy your pumpkin ale from a craft brewery. (True story from thanksgiving 2012)

 

Any experience with a hippy is a bad experience.

In all seriousness, I do think that the 5oz of priming sugar is a holdover from the old days. Almost invariably, any homebrewer I've met who has been doing it prior to this third (I think) wave of craft beer has either been an old hippy or an engineer (or some other tech or science profession), or possibly, a hippy engineer. The engineers are usually pretty good at adapting to new techniques and are the guys who made the online calculators that we use, so I'm blaming the hippies for the 5oz bags.

 

This is exactly why I always say to ignore the kit instructions. So much crap in there that isnt true or relevant (even with the best of them). I think all beginner sets of equipment should come with the book How to Brew.

Edit: And no kit should come with those bogus instructions, just a list of materials and hop addition times.