Bottle Bombs or Paranoia

Question

I am concerned I may overpressurize my bottles. I cold crashed the beer (my first time cold crashing) and never brought it back to room temp before bottling. I used an online calculator to calculate priming sugar. Without thinking I inputted the current temperature of the beer at bottle time which was about 35°F and finished bottling.

Can I carbonate this beer at room temp or do I need to keep it at 35°F?

I'm concerned that as the beer warms to room temp the volume of beer will increase. Combine that with the fact that the natural CO2 that is already in the beer from initial fermentation will be released as the beer warms. Then of course the priming sugar will be carbonated. I'm worried that I'm overthinking this. I feel the increase in volume as the beer warms is probably minuscule as well as the CO2 already in the beer from fermentation. I just wanted to make sure and ask others that may have done this as well.

By the way, the beer is just a blonde ale. OG: 1.056 and FG: 1.011.

Answer 1

According to this calculator, adding 1.4oz of sugar to 2gal at 35°F is equivalent to adding 5.4oz at 68°F.

At 35°F the disolved CO2 is around 1.61vol whereas at 68°F it is 0.86vol.

In your case the CO2 level should be around 2.9vol after carbonation at 68°F, it is very fizzy for a regular Ale (see carbonation guidelines ), but it should be fine and not create bottle bombs.

To be of the safe side, start carbonating normally at room temp, after few days to a week, open one beer to check for gushing and repeat after 2, 3 and 4 weeks. If you see a lot of gushing, open all the beers, put everything back to the carboy, let ferment and repeat priming & bottling.