A Craft Beer & Brewing Magazine reader recently asked us the following question:
I’ve recently started brewing with extract and my beers have been consistently over-carbonated. What could be the cause?
There are several possibilities, including too much carbonating sugar, bottling too soon, and using poor-quality malt or yeast. Let’s walk through each of these one at a time.
First, it is possible you are using too much sugar to carbonate the beer. For example, a lot of beer kits come with a generic amount of corn sugar (or other sugar) to be used for carbonation. It’s not uncommon to see a package of 5 oz (142 g) or more of corn sugar. However, to achieve an average level of carbonation on a 5 gal (19 l) batch, you really only need about 4.2 oz (119 g) of corn sugar.