Over primed beer bottles

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fairtomiddling

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I'm looking for a bit of advice.

Last week I bottled a double IPA and ran out of Coopers Carbonation Drops half way. In panic, I weighed one drop at 3g and decided this was the amount of sugar to put in the remaining 330ml bottles.

On reflection, this is way more sugar than is needed and is probably going to result in a fountain of beer when I open them!

Would there be a problem with pouring all the bottles out, letting the foam settle, then bottling the beer?

I'd really appreciate any advice!
 
rodabod said:
One week ago? They'll be carbonated already, I expect.

Pop open a sample to try. You haven't gone ludicrously over the top at 9g per litre, so see how it is first.
Click to expand...

I normally use 125g for 23 litres. 9g per litre is roughly 207g for the same amount. I would think it might be spectacular! Are they in glass or PET?
 
Do like Rodabond says and see. Maybe put them in the fridge a while to lessen the fizzing.

If you can't live with the carbonation you have, you could open the bottles one by one, let the gas off and then cap them again.

I did that and ended up with a dozen rather under-carbonated bottles. In the end I think that was a bigger issue than the over fizzy beer I'd tampered with. They all got drunk in the end.

Another possibility if they are way over carbonated might be to open the lot and put the beer into a sterile FV, cover and leave for a few days to ferment out any sugar that is left. Then re-bottle with the correct amount of sugar and put aside to carbonate again.
 
I've been using 1tsp of sugar in 500ml bottles in ales, stouts and lagers. I find the ales over carbonated so I'll cut that to 1/2tsp per 500ml bottle and leave the other two as is. For 1L bottles of TC and fruit punch I use 1 1/2tsp and that works well.
 
I just pour into a 1ltr glass jug first, let it settle a bit then into my glass, works fine.
 
Tony1951 said:
Do like Rodabond says and see. Maybe put them in the fridge a while to lessen the fizzing.

If you can't live with the carbonation you have, you could open the bottles one by one, let the gas off and then cap them again.

I did that and ended up with a dozen rather under-carbonated bottles. In the end I think that was a bigger issue than the over fizzy beer I'd tampered with. They all got drunk in the end.

Another possibility if they are way over carbonated might be to open the lot and put the beer into a sterile FV, cover and leave for a few days to ferment out any sugar that is left. Then re-bottle with the correct amount of sugar and put aside to carbonate again.
Click to expand...

Spectacular is the right word, about half of the bottle turned to foam and erupted as soon as I opened it! I managed to rescue a fair bit, but don't fancy juggling glasses for the remaining bottles.

I'll take your advice and reintroduce the beer to the fermenting vessel and rebottle when most of the sugar is gone.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions, I'll let you all know how it goes in a week or so.
 
Hope that works out for you. You can likely take a hydrometer reading to see if the sugar has already been used up. Keep it covered and clean and once you are sure the sg is steady and low enough (1008 - 1010 steady for a couple of days) you can re-bottle with the correct amount of sugar for the style you want.

If you have a pressure keg, after you've tested the sg, you can keg it with about 80gm of table sugar for 23 litres and use it that way. I keg most of my beer these days. It is very quick and easy as long as you check the tap seals are OK.

Good luck
 
I didn't think it would take me quite this long to feed this back, but it worked! I ended up with a well carbonated beer that went down a treat.

Thanks once again for the help. Hopefully I can return the favour when I have more experience under my belt.
 

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