Carbonation has to do with fermentable sugars. What you want to have happen is that the yeast is completely finished fermenting the beer for a few days, then you feed it some "dessert" so that it will begin to ferment again just a little bit in the bottles to generate the carbonation, but not too much "dessert" to where it gushes or turns into bottle bombs.
What I suspect happened is that this was one of your first batches, and you became impatient and bottled the beer before the yeast had finished fermentation. Then you fed the yeast even more priming sugar. The result is that there were still some sugars left in the original wort, PLUS more sugar from priming, so there was too much total sugar left for the yeast to eat in the bottles. Assuming that's the case, then you need to be more patient. How do you do that? Here:
In your fermenter, you need to wait until the airlock quits bubbling, and the yeast krausen falls back into the beer, and the beer begins to change from hazy to clear. There is no exact timeframe for when this will happen. Your recipe might say that primary fermentation will take 7 days or 10 days or something like that. DON'T BELIEVE IT. Yeast is alive, and they work at their own pace, not the pace of the recipe! When they are done fermenting, they'll let YOU know. Don't rush them. So, when it's obvious that the yeast is pretty much finished with fermentation, then hurry up and wait some more! Take a specific gravity reading at this point, and then wait 3 more days. Then take another specific gravity reading. If the gravity has not changed by one single point over the course of 3 days, THEN it is safe to bottle. If it changed at all, then you need to wait ANOTHER 3 days, check the gravity, and check for stability again. Continue until the gravity doesn't change anymore. The reason for this is that in some cases, fermentation might still be happening even when there is no krausen and the beer begins to clear.
It is also important NOT to rack the beer to secondary -- this can be detrimental, regardless of everything you might have read elsewhere. You want your yeast to do a nice job as quickly as possible, right?? So then why would you want to remove 90% of your yeast before they are finished doing their job?? That's what racking does. Don't do it. If you are concerned about autolysis, don't be. Tens of thousands of homebrewers have learned through experience that racking to secondary is unnecessary and that autolysis takes 2 to 3 months to kick in. So if you're at week #2 or 3 and you're concerned about yeast autolysis from waiting a few more days before you rack or bottle... well don't be. It's not a valid concern, not at all. Rack the beer only on bottling day to get some of that yeast out of there and help prevent most of it from getting into your bottles.
You used the right amount of priming sugar. Therefore I think you just bottled the beer too early before fermentation was totally done.
The only other possibility is that you were supposed to have 2.5 gallons in this batch, but because of boiling or racking or whatever, your volume is much much less than that. If you volume was closer to 2.0 gallons or something like that, this could have an enormous impact on your carbonation, because your priming sugar calculation was based on 2.5 gallons but your beer was more concentrated than that. So then there would be a higher concentration of priming sugar per bottle than was intended. So, another thing to keep a close eye on is to make sure you nail your volumes. If you final volume was like 2.3 gallons, pretty close to 2.5 gallons, then this is no big deal. But if it's pretty far away, like 2.2 gallons or less, then you might need to top up with more water before you prime, or else use a little less priming sugar then the recipe recommended.
To enjoy your current batch more, what you might need to do is pour your beer into a pitcher, let the foam die down for 10 minutes, and then pour the beer from the pitcher into your drinking glass. Then you can at least enjoy this batch with reduced carbonation. However, if when you pop the caps the beer is leaping out of the bottle immediately, then you could have a dangerous bottle bomb situation on your hands. In that case, it is important to pop all your bottles right away, then maybe let it ferment out in a fermenter again for a few days, then add less priming sugar and bottle again, following the specific gravity rules of every 3 days like I mentioned earlier to ensure the beer was ready to bottle before bottling again. Otherwise, those exploding bottles can be truly dangerous. It has happened to me. Shards of glass can appear up to 20-25 feet away from the bottles. You wouldn't want one of those bottles to explode in your hands or face or anything like that, or you would have far worse than just a beery mess to clean off the floor.
Don't bottle too early. Let your yeast work their magic. Then make sure they're really truly done by checking the specific gravity over the course of several days. Then bottle. Then enjoy. Also, nail your volume. If volume is low, reduce priming sugar, or consider topping up with more water, before you prime.
Topic: carb level (Read 1590 times)
