Should I expect bottle bombs?

[DeadGuyNick]

I just bottled my first brew yesterday, an IPA. I thought I was bottling 5 gallons, but when I made measurements on my fermentation bucket after it was empty, I realized it was only about 4.4 gallons. I did the typical 2/3 cup of table sugar in 2 cups of water.

Should I be expecting bottle bombs, or do I have a chance of getting through this?

Edit: I bottled 30 12oz bottles and 7 22oz bottles.

 

[yippysocks]

Hey Nick,
(this is Brandon)

I just got on to ask this question for you when I saw your post. Based on the picture you put up on Facebook, you ended up with 37 12oz bottles (correct me if I'm wrong) which equals about 3.5 gallons. (You never end up with quite as much as you started with when home brewing)

Using the bottle priming calculator at:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/
It looks like you should get 3.7 volumes of CO2. This is pretty high but I don't know if it will cause bottle bombs. I've read elsewhere that going over 4 is a bad idea, so you might be OK.

So basically, I have the same question: should he be worried about bottle bombs? And if not, at what point (volumes of CO2) would one start to expect explosions?

 

[TopherM]

You probably won't have bottle bombs, but you did overcarbonate by a good degree, and you are likely to have trouble pouring this beer and a possible carbonic acid bite off flavor.

I just did the same thing on one of my batches......

 

[yippysocks]

based on what I just learned about your yield, you have about 4 gallons of beer, which means you should get around 3.4 volumes CO2. This is pretty high but not unheard of, and I don't expect you to have any bottle bombs.

I made a nut brown ale a little while ago that ended up with around that much carbonation and like TopherM said, it was hard to pour because of the ridiculous amount of head. I had to let it set for a bit before I could drink it, but with a little patience it was still really good.

 

[DeadGuyNick]

Whelp, at least they wont explode.

What if I uncapped them all after a day or two, then re-capped? I know that's just asking for trouble, but it could work...

 

[TheNorthernBrewer]

Hey Nick,

I've tried the uncapping then recapping thing before, and it didn't work very well. I had a swing-top bottle, so it was a lot easier to uncap and recap. I opened it 5-6 times over the course of two days, and it reduced the carbonation by just a little bit. It introduced a lot of oxygen, though.

We just came out with a blog post on this topic, you might be interested in it: http://www.northernbrewer.com/connect/2012/04/over-carbonated-beer/

 

[DeadGuyNick]

Thanks for the info. I'll just leave them and we'll see what happens. We'll consider it a lesson learned amongst other things that went wrong this first time around!