Over-primed for bottle conditioning. How many days to blow off carbonation before allowing to resume?

Alright, so I've gone and over-primed a 5 gallon amber batch when bottling. Surprisingly, there is limited solid information available so I figured I would ask for feedback and then post the results hoping this proves useful for others.

Details:

  • 5 gallons of Amber ale, bottled into 12oz bottles
  • 3 weeks in primary fermenter at 65-67F, so initial fermentation certainly done (no OG/FG sorry)
  • Appx ABV 6-7%
  • Primed with 1lb of DME instead of 1.25 cups (so somewhere between 2.5-3x desired amount)
  • Minimal O2 in bottles outside of what's in headspace and whatever was in solution during primary fermentation
  • Bottle storage temperatures 66-68F

Current Status:

  • 48 hours post bottling
  • Opting to keep in bottles to prevent oxidation
  • Tonight I lifted cap edges enough to allow to offgas completely overnight with starsan and foil cover to prevent contamination
  • Currently plan to reseal tomorrow morning and fully recap in the next couple of days for final storage

So I've taken these steps to prevent bottle bombs, minimize oxidation, prevent infection, and generally allow the least amount of hassle/extra work. My dilema is that I'm having trouble finding a good chart of sugar consumption to know when to recap. Based on a couple obscure OG/FG charts plotted over days I'm seeing for ales that most sugars are consumed within the first 3-4 days. As @brewchez points out below that I originally did not consider, how does O2 affect sugar consumption rates? I would love to not have flat beer but definitely don't need bombs so does anyone know about sugar consumption rates during fermentation? Based on what I'm seeing I should be able to safely recap either on the third or fourth day and let the beer do it's thing without problem as most of the sugars have been consumed. Am I missing anything?

What I need help with:

  • Do any of you good people have solid info/knowledge about sugar consumption rates over time during beer fermentation?
  • Should I fully recap for conditioning at day 3, 4, or 5?
  • Does low O2 like there should be when bottle carbonating/conditioning slow sugar consumption?

Final Edit/Update: Two weeks post recapping with good carbonation, no bursting, and good flavor. The solution mentioned below by @brewchaz worked nicely to determine when to recap. Ended up being 3.5 days for me and has had no ill effects. Ultimately, I decided to fully uncap all bottles for 12 hours after trying the intermittent offgassing approach as I was getting very inconsistent results with amounts offgassed, and I desired all beers to be flat when recapped. Thanks for the help!

Topic over-carbonation priming bottling bottle-conditioning beer homebrew

Category Mac

1
answered at

Too many variables to predict the rate. That's why you can't find a chart.

Temperature, ABV of beer, yeast cell count per bottle, yeast viability, residual extract in beer (related to FG), dissolved O2: All these things contribute to your specific question about rate. It is not going to be universal.

You need to sacrifice a few bottles along the way and do hydrometer readings until the gravity of the beer is close to what it should have been with the proper amount of priming sugar in it. Then re-cap. That's the most scientific way to do it. Problems though: 1. Its going to happen pretty fast you might have already missed it. 2. You need a FG specific hydrometer for the sensitivity. 3. If you don't have the FG before you primed then you really don't know how many gravity points represent the priming sugar.

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