So I bottled my Caribou Slobber last Friday after fermenting for about 16 day. I tried it lastnight before my wife and I went out to eat. I poured it, looked great, great head retention, great flavor, just a little over carbonated. What can I do to soften the carbonation or tone it down. Should I let it bottle condition more? Its a great flavor beer just a bit to bubbly.
Carbonation won’t tone down with time–as a matter of fact, it may get worse. I’d put them all in the fridge. That will stop the yeast activity. You can open a cold one, let it sit in the fridge for 10 or 15 minutes, then pour. That’s what I did with an overcarbed batch once and it worked fine.
Did you take any gravity readings and was your fermentation temp controlled? How did you determine priming sugar? Answers to these questions will help in determining how to fix this on your next batch.
:cheers:
Ron
OG was 1.050 FG was 1.010 , I kept the beer around 74-75 degrees in the house wrapped my fermentor in a towel. I used the priming sugar that was givin to me in the extract kit which was a 5oz package.
I’ve made this kit and if I brew it again I would cut the priming sugar down by about 25%. Also try out the priming sugar calculator on line for future reference.
Voodoo is right. Priming sugar was a bit too much.
For example:
If you primed exactly 5 gallons, according to this site’s calculator, you’d need about 4.25 oz to get you to 2.4 volumes of co2 (standard for brown ale). So you actually primed to about 2.7 vols if you had 5 gallons. But…
If you did a partial boil and topped it off to five gallons, you probably only got about 4.8 or so gallons into the fermentor after leaving the trub behind. So if this is the case, you primed to about 3 vols, well above normal for a brown ale.
I always transfer the beer to my bottling bucket first, then calculate priming sugar based on the exact amount I have in the bucket. The calculator also asks for beer temp, which means the highest temp that the beer reached during fermentation. And since I always bring my beers (ales only right now) up to room temp towards the end of fermentation, then my room temp is the temp I enter into the calculator.
It should still be drinkable, just a little extra work and wait. Brewing is a constant learning process; just get another batch started and don’t look back–except to learn from mistakes. Also google swamp cooler–cheap and easy way to keep ferm temps down. Use frozen water bottles. Your beer will be much better if you ferment toward the low to mid 60’s for most ales.
:cheers:
Ron
HaHa, ya I will be brewing a Chocolate Milk Stout today. It isnt keeping me from brewing. Live and learn, it still tastes really good. I just let it sit for 5-8 minutes before I drink it.
5 oz is too much priming sugar for 5 gallons. Agree that this should be reduced by about 20%.
