Will a half-full beer bottle carbonate?
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That bit is referred to as the "brewers share" enjoy it flat! It is good to taste your brew at as many phases of brewing / fermenting as possible.
Unless you're filling the bottle with CO2 first, it will probably oxidize anyhow.
Unless you're filling the bottle with CO2 first, it will probably oxidize anyhow.
Heavywalker
Well-Known Member
I am not positive on this but I think it will actually overcarb with too much headspace. I will have to do some research on it but it seem like I ran across this before and that was the conclusion.
Heavywalker
Well-Known Member
I cannot find the reference to the science behind it but I am fairly certain that a half full bottle will over carb.
GHBWNY
Well-Known Member
I capped a half-full bottle at the end of a batch and I stuck it and a full bottle in the fridge right after bottling. A couple weeks later, I opened and tasted the half bottle and it was flatter than a pancake, so my immediate thought was the cold storage had shut down the yeast activity. So, I opened and tasted the full one and it was well-carbed, so there went THAT theory. My thinking is, with the half-full bottle, because there's too much open area between the CO2 and the beer itself, the CO2 doesn't get forced back into the brew.
EJay
Well-Known Member
I keep a few of the smaller coke bottles around (7 or 8 ounces) for that situation.
Yes it will carb, perhaps a bit less than a full bottle. Best not to let it hang around too long with all that 02 in the bottle, say 2 weeks or as soon as it is carbed drink it.
Black Island Brewer
An Ode to Beer
I half filled bottle will over carb. Be careful and drink it first.
An over filled bottle will take longer and may not carbonate depending on how much headspace there is.
An over filled bottle will take longer and may not carbonate depending on how much headspace there is.
suzuki98
Active Member
I'm not for sure what over carbonate actually means but I filled a bottle half full. I forgot I had about 12 bottles in my basement that sat close to a year, never refrigerated. I needed the bottles to bottle a new batch so I opened the half full bottle to see how it should taste. Well I never got to taste it, as soon as I opened the pressure was so great it felt like I got shot. The bottle didn't break (thank god), but now I'm scared to open the rest.
it will "overcarb" only if you add sugar to each bottle (like carb tablets or adding a spoon of sugar) and you add the same amount as you do to full bottle.
If you fill half a bottle with beer that already has sugar added to it (say in a bottling bucket), effectively adding half of the standard amount of sugar, it will actually undercarb - because the headspace will have more CO2 due to greater volume. It will be less of an issue once you put the bottle into a fridge, since most CO2 will get adsorbed back into the beer, but you would still have well over a volume of CO2 loss for the beer, relative to full bottles.
And it will take longer to equilibrate in the fridge as well. So let's say you aim for 2.5 CO2 volumes, you may end up with something like 1.25 CO2 volumes in the beer, and another 1.25 CO2 volumes in the headspace.
Finally - I suspect the reason why some people may report "overcarbed" bottles from incomplete final fills is probably because of undissolved sugar at the bottom of the bucket, which ends up in the last bottle you fill. In other words, it's only overcarbed because one effectively puts the sweetest beer, with more than average concentration of sugar - not because the bottle is half-empty (in fact that the fact that it's half-empty reduces this effect).
suzuki98
Active Member
Ok a question for you. I have about 12 more beers that were in the basement for about a year and has not been refrigerated. They are filled up to the neck. If I refrigerate them could they still"explode" upon opening?
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