Advice

[Crawfordid]

Hi guys just looking for a quick bit of advice! I've just bottled a batch of beer I checked the SG the 2 days consecutively after 10 days fermenting and wasnt bubbling much out of overflow pipe. Gravity was 1.012 then crash cooled to 2 degrees. Bottled the beer and primed it then rechecked (don't know why) it and it said 1.020! I also put a gallon of it in a secondary to add some extra things to it.

Now my problem is have I just created a crap load of bottle bombs and is there anything I can do about it? The one I put in secondary is bubbling away which is concerning! Is there anyway to calculate the gas release from the remaining sugar to ferment down to 1.012 from 1.020 and to guesstimate the excess pressure ? Or am I just going to have to cross my fingers and hope

 

[brumbrew]

Use a hydrometer temp correction doobry there here somewhere on the forum, or just Google it. Reading can change with temp.

 

[brumbrew]

Just checked for you and 2 degrees only drops 1.020 to 1.019 likewise for 1.012 only drops 1 point.

Did you kick up any sludge for your sample? Than can also affect the gravity readings. You need clean beer to test.

 

[chewie]

Hi guys just looking for a quick bit of advice! I've just bottled a batch of beer I checked the SG the 2 days consecutively after 10 days fermenting and wasnt bubbling much out of overflow pipe. Gravity was 1.012 then crash cooled to 2 degrees. Bottled the beer and primed it then rechecked (don't know why) it and it said 1.020! I also put a gallon of it in a secondary to add some extra things to it.

Now my problem is have I just created a crap load of bottle bombs and is there anything I can do about it? The one I put in secondary is bubbling away which is concerning! Is there anyway to calculate the gas release from the remaining sugar to ferment down to 1.012 from 1.020 and to guesstimate the excess pressure ? Or am I just going to have to cross my fingers and hope

You would have been better to bottle-prime-crash cool rather than crash cool-bottle-prime, the higher gravity will have been somewhat down to the unfermented priming sugar due to inactive yeast from the crash cooling most likely, raise the temp and see if further fermentation takes place and release any excess pressure daily.

 

[brumbrew]

Did you use glass bottles?

 

[Crawfordid]

Yep used glass bottles! The samples I checked were pretty cloudy but didn't kick up any sludge as use a pipette, but the beer was significantly clearer after crash cooling!

Also when I rechecked the specific gravity after bottling I checked a sample which hadn't had the priming sugar added! Lol wouldn't make sense for me to do that

 

[Personal91]

Yep used glass bottles! The samples I checked were pretty cloudy but didn't kick up any sludge as use a pipette, but the beer was significantly clearer after crash cooling!

Also when I rechecked the specific gravity after bottling I checked a sample which hadn't had the priming sugar added! Lol wouldn't make sense for me to do that

Sounds to me like you were too much of an eager beaver :lol:

should have left it longer in the primary fermenter for ya yeasties to eat up an additional sugars and to smooth out any off flavours

2 weeks is normally the minimum that youd want your brew to be in the primary fermenter :)

 

[Fil]

check your hydrometer in tap water it should read 1.000 or close as damn to it.

if washed rinsed in hot water you can break the seal on the simple glue holding the gradient tube in place and if thats shifting about its going to give meaningless readings..

 

[beerhunter]

surely the priming sugar would cause this rise anyway.

 

[Spapro]

Priming sugar (at 5g per litre or thereabouts) should only cause a 1 or 2 point increase in gravity - so would lift it from 1.012 to 1.013/1.014

 

[ericmark]

I have two hydrometers, one from my dad, and one from my wife, both old. I noted two things, one they have different set temperatures, one 60°F the other 20°C and two the correction for temperature are also very different. In this case one is plastic the other glass. But when I looked into glass, it seems glass does not have a fixed rate of expansion it depends on what the glass is made from and there is a huge range of glass expansion rates.

So the only temperature correction scale you can use, is the one which came with the hydrometer, there is no universal temperature correction. The coefficient of linear expansion of glass is some where between 0.000004 and 0.000009 per °C. so some glass is over double other glass. We would hope a hydrometer is made from Pyrex which has the lower rate of expansion. Water is an odd substance in that it is most dense at 4°C and we are looking at the comparison between water and the glass used rather than just the glass. Some hydrometers don't need any correction between a range of temperatures because the glass used has a similar expansion rate to water.

If you don't have the conversion chart for your hydrometer then only option is to make sure the liquid is at 60°F or 20°C which ever temperature the hydrometer is calibrated to. The plastic hydrometer correction was the reverse of the glass one. 60°F = approx 15.56°C.

I have made an error in the past, I ended up pouring all the bottles back into fermentor waiting another week then re-bottling it. Really you should syphon the beer back into the fermentor so you don't add any oxygen, I find if I prime in the bottles, if the beer is not ready you notice when you syphon into bottles there is a lot of CO2 pulled out of the brew in the syphon tube. If I see loads of CO2 being pulled out, I normally stop and delay a day or two. I now use all PET bottles as well, easy to test pressure without opening. The other is to use swing tops, they auto release any over pressure. Hence always keep swing tops upright.

 

[Crawfordid]

surely the priming sugar would cause this rise anyway.

And I didn't check it after I'd added the priming sugar I checked it before

 

[beerhunter]

"Bottled the beer and primed it then rechecked (don't know why) it and it said 1.020!"

ok matey, this is the bit that made me think you primed then checked.

 

[Fil]

dont rely on swingtops 'self regulating' i have had a couple of swingtop bottle bombs when sealed up using a warm oxi solution to remove dried on sediment scum.

 

[ericmark]

My wife picked up a couple of swing top bottles from Ikea, what a load of rubbish, so yes I can see how quality varies and some may not auto release pressure. For high alcohol brews I use glass, and cider, but for beer I use pop bottles, 40 pints is a lot of bottling with small bottles, but with 2 litre bottles looking at around 12 bottles, so quick and easy, also can test pressure without opening, and in use just pour what you want. Draw back is after first pint you can easy disturb sediment, so you want as little as possible in first place, so I work on 20 days for every brew, 10 days in freezer with temperature control, then 1 day in fridge to settle, then rack to clean fermentor, then 9 days in fridge and bottle. Extra time both ensures it has finished and sediment has dropped out.

Be it beer or high alcohol I always give the extra days for things to work, be it fermenting or charcoal or finning just a little extra time works wonders.

 

[JapanBrew]

I would just give them a day or two, lightly pry on the cap, it will release a bit but you won't have to recap. Just do that every other day for a week or so.