Too Much Head Space In My Bottles

[dwarbi]

Trouble #1, now trouble #2:
This past weekend I bottled a DIPA. Tasting from the cask, it's the best brew I've made. 17L, 85 grams of priming sugar, bottled, capped. Wednesday night a friend of mine was over and I decided to give him a taste. I expected the beer to be flat, but phtht! - lovely head! oh no. So last night I opened another: yep... volcano. I just wanted to save the batch, so opened all the bottles and recapped after they had spewed forth a little bit. So NOW the bottles have way too much head space. Should I expect more carbonation issues?

I know everyone must assume I bottled too soon - but it was in primary for a week and secondary for two weeks. The gravity was 24 for nearly the entire time it was in secondary. Next time I brew this recipe I'll put the beer in terciary.

 

[razz]

The big question dwarbi, did it taste okay ? If not, an infection cuold cause the gushing. If it tastes okay then you will need to top up the head space with something else. How much headspace are you talking ? Did you chill all the bottles before you let out the excess gas ?

 

[dwarbi]

tasted great - definitely no infection. Not too too much head space - in the 330s it's no more than just the necks.

 

[razz]

Sounds good, just store and forget.

 

[KoNG]

if your gravity was 1.024 at the end of your secondary.. that should have raised some alarm bells. what was your OG...? you probably needed to add some more yeast (unless by DIPA you mean a big malty ipa that started high and would hence finish high.)
you can just keep bleeding the bottles of CO2, try to do that without losing any beer and you'll be fine. I've left half bottled longnecks for several months with no real adverese effects (even though it is not ideal).

 

[dwarbi]

Good to hear, thanks for that. And I'll have to check my notes but the OG was 90 or 80... so 24 isn't TOO high.

 

[KoNG]

whooaaa
yeh thats quite an OG you have there. probaly not too far off for FG then.
Obviously just had a little further to go. peel the caps each day, till you find they are near finished and you should be fine. (i've done this.. it is tedious but works fine....)

 

[evanmit]

if you've got around 330mls I would dare say that you could get away leaving them as they are (assuming in stubbies) but if you had the time you could always use one to top all the others up.