[rburrelli]

"IPA that I brewed on 10/17/17 and bottled on 10/29/17"

Do you normally bottle that quickly?

[Uvolnit]

Check the specific gravity of one of the over carbonated beers.  Compare it to the SG when it was bottled.

Interesting idea.  I'll do so with one of the Winter Warmer's here in the next few days and will report my findings.

"IPA that I brewed on 10/17/17 and bottled on 10/29/17"

Do you normally bottle that quickly?

No.  I'm not sure why I did so but from my knowledge that's long enough.  I think I wanted to try and brew it quickly because it's possible, and also to try and keep the hop aromatics fresh tasting.  It would have been nice if I cold crashed it but it turned out quite hazy, which isn't a bad thing.  Also, I did check to make sure the fermentation was done in primary before racking to secondary.  I've been using yeast starters which start to vigorously ferment within about 8 hours so I think that cuts out a few days over using a single yeast packet.
My standard fermentation time is primary for at least 10 days if not longer (as long as fermentation is complete), then secondary for 1 week if dry hopping or multiple weeks if an age-able beer.

[Uvolnit]

I just opened a bomber that has been refrigerating for at least a week.  At first opening it did slowly foam up and you can clearly see that most of the vigorous CO2 is coming from within the trub layer at the bottom of the bottle.  After a few minutes the excessive bubbling stops and does pour a nice beer.  I did attempt to cold crash this beer but put in my cold garage for only a few hours and when I moved the carboy to the kitchen to rack to the bottling bucket the trub sediment did get put back in to solution a bit at the bottom and I didn't wait long enough for it to settle again, so part of this excessive bottle sediment is my fault.  Now I know.

Also, I just checked the gravity of this bomber and it reads 1.017.  The OG was 1.080 and FG that it read twice before I decided to cold crash was 1.018.  This can be taken with a grain of salt since I am using a wine stealer, which can be a little difficult to read accurately.  And, the gravity can vary depending on the temp...but for this experiment the temp of the beer is very close.
Apparently I should have left the beer age another week/month or so?  I realize now after posting a few questions that the high alcohol content of this beer and the "medium" tolerance of the yeast causes it to work slower than a regular beer.

This beer was fermented in primary for 3 weeks and 2 days, then secondary with added spices/additions for 7 days.  All fermentation was done at a temp range of about 66-71° room temperature.  If it's true that the beer had another 0.001 gravity to eat after my readings how long can it be expected to wait?

[dmtaylor]

Apparently I should have left the beer age another week/month or so? 
This beer was fermented in primary for 3 weeks and 2 days, then secondary with added spices/additions for 7 days.  All fermentation was done at a temp range of about 66-71° room temperature.  If it's true that the beer had another 0.001 gravity to eat after my readings how long can it be expected to wait?

Another 3 or 4 days would have been sufficient.  Don't be in a rush.  If you're not certain fermentation is totally complete, measure SG, wait a few more days, measure SG again, make sure it's stable, but if it still seems to be bubbling or you have a lot of haze, maybe wait even longer just to be safe.

[Visor]

   I suspect that infection is one of, if not your only problem. I've been having a great many of my beers turn to gushers, some almost immediately, many after as much as a year in the bottle. Last night I tried one of the last of an IPA I bottled last April and it was just about right carbonationwise. The batch had been properly carbonated for the 1st couple months, then overnight turned into gushers, now the gusher phase seems to be over? I'm scratching my head over that bit.
   I do use Speise for priming instead of sugar, but always at a rate to keep carbonation under 1 1/2 atmospheres.
  Another head scratcher that some may call BS on, I've had a few commercial beers that sat in my basement fridge for several months turn into gushers after time.
   I am trying some ideas to be more rigorous about sanitation, but if my problem is infection, and the cause is airborne yeast spores, I think I'm just screwed, cuz I aint moving to another place to escape yeast spores.
   

[Robert]

Commercial beer sitting in fridge and turning into gushers: possibly oxalate precipitation in bottle?

[Visor]

   A couple bottles and at least 2 cans. If someone else told me this happened to them I'd figure they BS-ing me.
   I do have elevated radon levels in the summer, but I've never heard of any science that could tie radon and gushing beers together. I also don't know how the radon would get into sealed cans and bottles.
   I'm chalking it up to space aliens.

[Uvolnit]

Apparently I should have left the beer age another week/month or so? 
This beer was fermented in primary for 3 weeks and 2 days, then secondary with added spices/additions for 7 days.  All fermentation was done at a temp range of about 66-71° room temperature.  If it's true that the beer had another 0.001 gravity to eat after my readings how long can it be expected to wait?

Another 3 or 4 days would have been sufficient.  Don't be in a rush.  If you're not certain fermentation is totally complete, measure SG, wait a few more days, measure SG again, make sure it's stable, but if it still seems to be bubbling or you have a lot of haze, maybe wait even longer just to be safe.

Sounds good.  From now on I'm going to wait at least a few more days on all my beers to allow for more fermentation.  Almost always, only the first few days have very active airlock bubbling and it slows quickly.  Usually when I take gravity readings to decide if it's finished I take 2 days in a row, which now sounds like it may not be enough time apart.

[Uvolnit]

   A couple bottles and at least 2 cans. If someone else told me this happened to them I'd figure they BS-ing me.
   I do have elevated radon levels in the summer, but I've never heard of any science that could tie radon and gushing beers together. I also don't know how the radon would get into sealed cans and bottles.
   I'm chalking it up to space aliens.

Definitely aliens.
Do you remember what the commercial beers were?  I'm just curious.  Also, this is a whole other topic that I'm not scientifically familiar with but it seems that beers pour differently in different glasses and whether they're warm/cold and/or wet or not.  I do that some times even a commercial beer will pour a tad overcarbonated if poured into an odd or previously drank out of wet glass.

[trubgerg]

Good to know.  And, I doubt there's any way to know if and why an infection occurred which makes it all a guessing game unless you know for sure something could have infected it.
At about what temp were you storing the bottles you mentioned were bottle bombing and with bowed caps?

About room temperature.  But that's the only time I've ever seen caps out of shape... something was really wrong inside those bottles. 

After that I cleaned my fermenters (plastic buckets) with PBW and haven't had any issues since.  But yeah, in a homebrew situation I'm not swabbing surfaces and plating the results under a microscope to pinpoint where the potential infection came from. 

[Visor]

   A couple bottles and at least 2 cans. If someone else told me this happened to them I'd figure they BS-ing me.
   I do have elevated radon levels in the summer, but I've never heard of any science that could tie radon and gushing beers together. I also don't know how the radon would get into sealed cans and bottles.
   I'm chalking it up to space aliens.

Definitely aliens.
Do you remember what the commercial beers were?  I'm just curious.  Also, this is a whole other topic that I'm not scientifically familiar with but it seems that beers pour differently in different glasses and whether they're warm/cold and/or wet or not.  I do that some times even a commercial beer will pour a tad overcarbonated if poured into an odd or previously drank out of wet glass.

   The cans were Payette Rustler IPA, at this point I don't recall what the bottles were. Interestingly, I had a Rustler from the same bunch the other day and it was fine??? As for the alien angle, like they say, the fact that one is paranoid, doesn't preclude the possibility that they really are out to get you.

[Uvolnit]

So my latest brew's carbonation came out perfect.  I did cold crash the secondary for a week and added gelatin a few days in the cold crash.  The beer is super clear and has very little sediment in the bottom of the bottles.  However, it is an IPA that I intended to have bursting flavor and aroma and it does not.  I think the gelatin dropped some of the hop oils or such.  In the future for IPA's like this I'm going to just cold crash and/or let the secondary sit for at least a week to drop the solids out of suspension.  I also don't have a fridge to put a fermenter in so I may put the carboy in a tub with ice to help cool it down in that time.

[flars]

I don't have the facilities to cold crash so I just wait until the beer begins to clear then dry hop in the primary.  About 14 to 18 days from the start of active fermentation.  When the beer begins to clear the CO2 in solution is diminishing and excess yeast and sediment can drop.  Less CO2 in solution and less yeast dropping out will allow more of the oils contributing aroma from the hops to remain.

[Uvolnit]

An update to my original over-carbonation/foaming:  the 2 latest brews came out wonderfully.  These 2 brews were cold crashed, unlike all my others.  When racking to secondary and bottling bucket I left a tiny layer of beer on top of the trub instead of racking all of the liquid and also some of the trub layer, which I think ended up in tiny amounts in each of the bottles.  I also bottle-brush cleaned each bottle with Star-San right before bottling, to remove stuck on junk inside the bottles. 

Results:
The vast majority of the 2 new beers were carbonated perfectly.  Some had a tad bit of extra foam but the foam did not come out of the bottle like a baking soda and vinegar volcano slowly like some of my previous beers.  I had 1 that foamed like mad but noticed that the bottle had a hefty amount of crap at the bottom, which likely contaminated that beer causing the extra carbonation and/or foaming.

Another topic is that I need to clean my bottles before sanitizing them at the time of bottling.  What do most home brewers do?  Should I use something like PBW with a bottle brush and clean the inside of each bottle, then rinse, then rinse with a sanitizer (Star-San) just before bottling?  Until doing further research recently I did not realize there was a difference in a cleaner vs a sanitizer.   
Also, I don't like how Star-San bubbles/foams when rinsing out the bottles to sanitize.  After dunking and swirling the Star-San in the bottles I place on my bottle tree but some still have some "webs" of Star-San inside when I go to fill with beer.  I also read not to rinse out the Star-San with water as you're then potentially adding contaminants once again.  I did this in past brews.

[Robert]

You can save yourself the trouble of bottle brushing if the bottles are reasonably clean to start with:  when you pour one, rinse well or wash out with a little dish liquid before storing.  To prepare a batch, soak in PBW and rinse well.  Visually confirm that the bottles are really clean. Before bottling, sanitize with iodophor, not Star San.   Not only does it not foam, it also kills everything.  Star San kills  most (but not necessarily all) bacteria, but not yeast, wild yeast, molds and other fungi.  Iodophor kills it all.

(If PBW leaves a chalky deposit though,  Star San is good at removing that.  Might be a useful step.)