Over carbination issues

[schmitt777]

I am having very intermittent issues with over carbonation, I'm not popping bottles or anything like that. It's just ruining otherwise good beer.

I have had the issue with a kolsch, a cream ale, a honey pale ale, and now my oatmeal stout.
These are all full boil 5 gal brews with smack pack & starter, sit in primary for 10 days @70 deg. Then secondary for 10 more.
Use 5 oz corn sugar mixed with 2 cups of boiled water then cooled. I mix the beer on top of the sugar solution in the bottle bucket.
I let the bottles sit for 2 or 3 weeks. So is it toooo much yeast? What else could it be ?

Too

 

[Quaker]

Too much yeast doesn't cause it. It's too much food for the yeast.

When you say intermittent, do you mean bottle to bottle or batch to batch?

If bottle to bottle, then it's a mixing issue with the priming sugar, but your process sounds good.

If batch to batch, then you are probably not fully fermenting to terminal gravity. Despite the time you are giving, temperature drop may be stalling it out. Or you aren't getting a healthy ferment with a large enough yeast pitch or oxygenation up front.

Another potential is that you've had a smaller volume of finished beer on some batches yet you are using the same amount of priming sugar. Although 5oz is quite traditional, it will generally put you on the higher side of what I would typically want with a full 5 gallon of finished beer.

 

[acidrain]

What was the final gravity, and how many days did it stay at that FG before secondary?
When talking about fermentation, it's all about the gravity, not the number of days.
I think maybe Quaker is on to it though... probably didn't get the sugar mixed in well.

 

[schmitt777]

Too much yeast doesn't cause it. It's too much food for the yeast.

When you say intermittent, do you mean bottle to bottle or batch to batch?

If batch to batch, then you are probably not fully fermenting to terminal gravity. Despite the time you are giving, temperature drop may be stalling it out. Or you aren't getting a healthy ferment with a large enough yeast pitch or oxygenation up front.
.

It is batch to batch, I have not been checking FG since moving to glass primary and secondary, guess I need a beer thief. I've been going under the assumption that the fast vigorous fermentation in the first couple days and the extended time was getting a full fermentation. My hydrometer and tube takes a lot of beer to float and just hate dumping it and concerned about touching the beer in secondary.

The temp is pretty stable I keep it in a box in a corner in the kitchen, the temp stays at 69 or 70.

Thanks for the quick reply and good info. Will get back to measuring the gravity and stop assuming ' cause we all know how that works

Dave

 

[peterj]

I think the problem is almost certainly that you are adding too much priming sugar. The amount of priming sugar you add should change based on the volume of beer that you end up with. 5 oz is usually too much for a 5 gallon batch. You should use an online calculator to figure the amount of priming sugar to add based on the amount of beer you end up with. I usually use this one: http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/, but there are tons out there.

Also you should definitely take the FG of every beer to make sure it's done ferementing. You don't want to end up with exploding bottles! I always drink the sample so I never feel like it's too much of a waste.

 

[ncbrewer]

Lots of good advise here. Another possibility is some wild yeast or bacteria getting into some of the batches and continuing to ferment.

 

[NTXBrauer]

My hydrometer and tube takes a lot of beer to float and just hate dumping it and concerned about touching the beer in secondary.

Don't dump your sample, taste it after taking the reading to know how your beer is progressing, and take notes.

 

[PRE66_6TART]

I used to buy those pre-measured 5 oz packages of priming sugar from my lhbs, and I don't know how 5 oz got to be the standard amount to use, but for me it's usually a little high. My beers were all a little too highly carbonated for my taste, plus I was assuming I had five gallons at bottling time since my carboys were pretty full, but I wasn't really measuring it, so if my volume was a little off I got gushers. Now I carefully measure my beer volume and weigh out .75 oz of priming sugar per gallon, for most beers. I like Yooper's rule of thumb of .75 to 1 oz per gallon, but I tend to stay towards the low end.

 

[smyrnaquince]

You said that you lose too much beer with your hydrometer sample. I use the tube that the hydrometer came in. It takes less than 1/2 a cup to float the hydrometer. Just make sure that the sample is cool enough not to melt the tube.