Carbonation limits

Have have a batch of brew that I bottled a week ago, and during the last week it was pretty warm in the house because we were doing work and couldnt use the AC (curse global warming). So I cracked one open yesterday to test the 1 week mark, per usual, and was surprised to find the bottle fully carbed up. I assume this was due to the elevated temps im the high 70’s. While SWMBO shot down the idea of turning the AC on “just for the beer”, Im pretty sure the elevated temps didn’t do anything except speed up the carb process.

So my question is, does this mean that my bottles are done carbonating, or is there a risk that in another weeks time the bottles would be over-carbonated. The scientist in me says that since there was a normal amount of priming sugar used at bottling, its not like the beer would just magically create more CO2 and become beer explosions waiting to happen… it just happened to carb faster. My cautious side however doesn’t want to risk the chance of over carbonating this delicious pale ale, and I think I should maybe just fridge everything now to stop the process. So the other question is would chilling the beer prematurely hinder any aging or conditioning that would normally be done at room temps? Will the beer continue to mature if I chill it, or does that essentially put a stop to everything? I normally keep bottles at room temp for about 3 weeks until I start getting after a few. I guess it may be psychological, but I feel that that is around the time when my brew is good to go.

Any thoughts?

Plan C is go on a moderate bender and drink all of it tonight so I don’t have to think about this anymore.

Thanks!

Your scientific senses are correct. They’re most likely done carbonating. If you added the right amount of priming sugar they won’t be bombs. I generally put my carbing beer in the warmest place in the house just to speed things along.

The exception to this would be if you bottled too soon and the fermentation wasn’t complete. Otherwise, I agree with Lennie.

Or if the beer is contaminated with something that can ferment more sugars than the yeast. But more than likely that isn’t the case.