Potential Bottle Bombs?

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Dutch
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Potential Bottle Bombs?

Post by Dutch » Mon Jun 23, 2008 7:28 am

I recently made a batch of bavarian wheat which I split in half and made half apricot and half raspberry. When I went to bottle I realized I did not have any priming sugar. I didn't want to use cane [confectioners] sugar but did have some light corn syrup. Unfortunately I think I may have used too much. I used a cup and a half for the total batch. Accoring to caloric values, I used 1200 total calories. I believe in a cup and a half of confectioners sugar there are about 720 calories. Not sure how many calories are in a cup and a half of corn sugar.
I am going to place the bottles in a bomb shelter.
What can I do??????
HELP!

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john mills
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Post by john mills » Mon Jun 23, 2008 1:30 pm

I don't believe all is lost. If you take away the water weight of the corn syrup (which really isn't much) to compare it to regular granulated corn sugar, I believe you used just slightly less than double the sugar needed for carbonation. Good news is, that your style of brew tolerates more fizz, but not that much. Going forward I think you have a few choices:
1. Wait a week, sample the fine beer. If it's near the carbonation level you like, stick all of them in the coldest part of the fridge to slow fermentation down as much a possible, and drink up. You might have them all gone before any of them self destruct. :beer5
2. Same as above, just invite friends over to speed up the disposal (I'll volunteer for this task!) :beer6
3. Wait a week, sample the fine beer. If carbonation is coming along nicely, take all the caps off and recap them. This will release the pressure, but won't totally release the co2 already in solution. (This might have to be repeated in another week after you sample again to determine carbonization level)...or you could pour out about an ounce to get more head room for pressure to build again. :)
4. This one is tricky...wait a week, and try to burp the bottles by gently prying the cap just enough to let the pressure off, but allow it to reseal and build pressure again.
5. Uncap the the entire batch, pour back into your bottling bucket and rebottle, without adding any more sugar. The carbonation already present in the bottled beer should create a carbon dioxide blanket over the beer in the bucket and prevent the oxidization of your brew. This would be similar to capping on foam, just on a larger scale. :shock:
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