I bottles an ESB a couple of months ago and underestimated how much beer the dry hops would soak up, so I ended up overpriming my bottles. Unfortunately, there is a lot of sediment in the bottles (side note - I will never be trying the “1-day dry hop” thing again. Not enough time for the hops to settle out and too much makes it through my siphon/paint-strainer bag setup). The carbonation is high enough that it blows the sediment loose once I open the bottle and it all makes it into my glass. Essentially, this batch is a dumper unless I can fix the carbonation issue.
So, has anyone here had any luck fixing an overcarbonated batch of bottles? Most of the bottles I’ve tried have been gushers, so I don’t think I can simply open, then recap them. Any ideas?
No good fix here. I’d go with putting in freezer for 20 minutes first. Other than that I think the only thing you can do is dump the beer into a carboy, fermenter, or bucket, let the sediment settle and then bottle or keg again. The beer would probably suck.
I had a Mead one time that I thought was Still, it wasn’t… Fortunately I bottled it in 12 oz. beer bottles with crown caps. You can gently pry the cap just enough to let some pressure off and then release it when it starts to foam up. The cap, for the most part, will reseal and stop the gushing. You have to be gentle though. If you actually open it enough so it won’t reseal you’re in for a mess… I had to do this over a number of days before I could open them completely. Then I set new sanitized caps on top of each bottle for about a week or so to let them vent, and then recapped. They turned out fine. Cheers!!!
This does work but get them cold first to prevent the initial gush. Also, just pop the cap enough to hear some hiss, when it stops re-cap. If they are really over primed you may have to do this more than once to get the level correct.