Thar she blows - How bad (or good) is this?

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eljefe

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Quick background:
- Brewed the 11.11.11 yesterday. All grain, Wyeast Old Ale Blend yeast from a healthy starter (started last Saturday with 2 cups water, 1/2 cup light DME, and then added a second edition on Wednesday same measurements).
- No issues with the brewing. Pitched yeast into 5.25 gallons of wort and had an OG of 1.082
- Given starter, OG and size I opted for a 6 gallon carboy with a blow-off tube.
- Tube goes into an empty plastic apple juice container with a hole cut out of the top for ventilation. Container is filled with sanitizer.
- Yeast pitched at 8:15 last night, carboy placed in basement with ambient temp of 62 degrees.

This morning around 6 I checked on it and there were bubbles coming out of the ventilation hole and kruzen through out the tube. I expected this and not surprised. I emptied some of the sanitizing liquid in the container since there was a small trail of liquid by it.

I came home tonight to find I have the Mt Vesuvius of kruzen in my basement.

I would like to verify that the volume of liquid coming out is not indicative of some other issue. I have used blow off tubes in the past but not with this result. Also, is this desired or should I be using a bigger carboy. I still think the carboy vs bucket was the right call, but holy smokes this is crazy. Here are some pictures, which does not fully capture what is all over the floor.

Please keep in mind that the sanitizing liquid was clear to start and it is now as dark as the beer in the carboy.

Thank you

IMG_0233.jpg


IMG_0238.jpg
 
Ha. LMFAO!!! :D

Edit...now just LMAO!!! 5.25G in a 6 might be pushing it (obviously here) and no, you don't have "some other issue". Ha...good luck with the cleanup and you are the man for posting pics!!!

Ha!
 
I'd be worried that you blew off too much yeast to finish the job, but odds are that it'll be fine minus some volume and proteins.
 
Yeah, see all that foam there? That was going to be the head on your beers. Sorry for your loss, the beer will taste nearly the same, but boost your carbonation and drink fast once it's in the glass.
 
Yeah, see all that foam there? That was going to be the head on your beers. Sorry for your loss, the beer will taste nearly the same, but boost your carbonation and drink fast once it's in the glass.

I'm curious as to the reasoning behind this statement.
 
Your beer will be fine, you've got a nice healthy fermentation. Next time you could try some Fermcap in the fermenter, that usually knocks the foam back pretty well.
 
Me too. I would think that foam is primarily from the sanitizer.
The foam is a combination of yeast cells, large impurities and long chain protiens such as the ones that contribute to the head on a beer. Most of the protiens that are responsible for head retention are hydrophobic, thus they are surface attracted and will coat the surface of small bubbles rising through the solution. There they increase surface tension and stabilize the bubbles contributing to longer lasting head on the beer. If you strip theise protiens uut of solution via foam fractionation durring fermentation, there will be lower concentrations available for head retention when you actually want the bubbles stabilized. I'm not saying that the beer will be headless, but you simply can not have that kind of blowoff without stripping desirable protiens from the beer. And your beer will have much improved head retention if you prevent blowoff like that
 
If it makes you feel any better, I just woke up to the same thing with a beer I brewed last night.

It was interesting to wake up to an orange wall and realize what that water sound was that I kept hearing...
 
I had that with a stout recently. Lost about 1/2 g out of a 5 g batch. I was using a 6.5G pail with a blow off into a 1g growler. It filled the growler, and spilled out everywhere.
 
I had that with a stout recently. Lost about 1/2 g out of a 5 g batch. I was using a 6.5G pail with a blow off into a 1g growler. It filled the growler, and spilled out everywhere.

I had a similar experience. About 4.75 gallons in a 6-gallon Better Bottle with a blowoff into a growler. Something went terribly awry and I ended up losing THREE GALLONS of beer. No one could really figure out how that happened, other than me having somehow created a pressure imbalance somewhere. I have a new blowoff assembly and some Fermcap, so hopefully I'm good for my next batch.
 
The foam is a combination of yeast cells, large impurities and long chain protiens such as the ones that contribute to the head on a beer. Most of the protiens that are responsible for head retention are hydrophobic, thus they are surface attracted and will coat the surface of small bubbles rising through the solution. There they increase surface tension and stabilize the bubbles contributing to longer lasting head on the beer. If you strip theise protiens uut of solution via foam fractionation durring fermentation, there will be lower concentrations available for head retention when you actually want the bubbles stabilized. I'm not saying that the beer will be headless, but you simply can not have that kind of blowoff without stripping desirable protiens from the beer. And your beer will have much improved head retention if you prevent blowoff like that

Here is a response last year to the same issue from Denny Conn himself agreeing with remilard and refuting your position. I consider Denny to be an outstanding source of homebrewing information and an adequate citation. Please cite a similarly adequate citation to support your premise. The entire thread can be viewed here
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/big-krausen-good-head-151080/index2.html
Many other brewers say in the thread that they have experienced little to no correlation between blowoff and head retention.

remi seems to say much the same thing as you about these proteins coming out of solution but comes to exactly the opposite conclusion regarding the impact on head retention.

Certain molecular weight proteins are foam positive (but not the only foam positive compounds in beer, eg some hop derived phenols are foam positive).

So you could say, accurately I think, that a beer with a lot of foam positive material would tend to produce more krausen, all else being equal. However I think the dominating factor in krausen size is the vigor of co2 evolution, as that is what brings foam positive material out of solution forming foam.

An interesting but probably not very important fact is that once these foam positive materials come out of solution to form krausen or beer foam, they do not go back in solution and so are effectively lost. Therefore it is probably also accurate to say that all else being equal, a lot of krausen would reduce the amount of foam positive material in the finished beer and reduce foam stability. However, I think this is a pretty minor and insignificant effect.

So bottom line, I would say you can glean about zero information about the foam stability of the finished beer by observing the krausen.

I'd agree with both of these statements.

The ball is in your court my friend :mug:
 
I've also heard Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer talk about the subject. They both said that once the head forming proteins are formed they are lost for good. So keeping the krausen in the fermenter would do absolutely zero good. You can also add Dr. Charles Bamforth to that list of those who say that over foaming during fermentation results in the loss of foam promoting components. So it doesn't matter if you keep the foam in your beer or not, the end result is the same.

To the OP, fret not! Your beer is going to be just the same as if your blowoff never happened. :)
Sweet picture by the way!
 
The ball is in your court my friend :mug:

Neither of those posts are addressing the issue of huge, gallon-amounts of krausen being formed and lost from the beer due to blowoff, they're just talking about big-yet-normal amounts of krausen. While I agree with their general sentiments that the beer won't be enormously impacted, neither of the "sources" you cite say anything regarding the specific issue in this thread. It should also be noted that neither makes any definitive claims ("However, I think this is a pretty minor and insignificant effect.") nor source any scientific research themselves.
 
48 hours later, everything appears to be back to normal. The excess foam has flattened and now looks like a coke slurpee that spilled on the floor. Should I change the "sanitizing" solution in the blow off container since it is brown?
 
I won't give you some long explanation, or give you a quote from any "brewing god". I am not going to use any "citations" to support my premise. But I'm pretty sure the sun will come up tomorrow, and your beer will be fine. Drink it up when it's ready!:mug:
 
I won't give you some long explanation, or give you a quote from any "brewing god". I am not going to use any "citations" to support my premise. But I'm pretty sure the sun will come up tomorrow, and your beer will be fine. Drink it up when it's ready!:mug:

I wasn't trying to come off like an ass...I was trying to refute his very scientific seeming points with solid info. It just pisses me off when a fellow brewer comes on here to share or ask a question and someone goes all chicken little on 'em and tells them how f'ed up their beer is going to be. Its unnecessary and I feel defeats the purpose of these forums.

My point was the same as yours...RDWHAHB...no need to condescend because I quote someone who has provided solid info in the past. Denny isn't a "beer god" as you say, but he is experienced. People come on here all the time and spout random **** with nothing to back it up but bluff and bluster and a dime-store vocabulary. I have a research background so if you make a claim, I think you should be able to back it up with either your or a credible source's experience.

Rant over...let's get back to brewin' :mug:
 
Here is a response last year to the same issue from Denny Conn himself agreeing with remilard and refuting your position. I consider Denny to be an outstanding source of homebrewing information and an adequate citation. Please cite a similarly adequate citation to support your premise. The entire thread can be viewed here
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/big-krausen-good-head-151080/index2.html
Many other brewers say in the thread that they have experienced little to no correlation between blowoff and head retention.

remi seems to say much the same thing as you about these proteins coming out of solution but comes to exactly the opposite conclusion regarding the impact on head retention.




The ball is in your court my friend :mug:

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you, work keeps interupting my beer obsession. First let me say that my personal expertise with foam fractionation is aimed at process liquids and protein recovery, I am not fully versed in in the effects of fractionation on beer. However, i can relate what I know.

The major stabilizer for beer head is a polypeptide LTP1. This protein is hydrophobic and foam positive and is naturally occouring in barley. The less LTP1 you have, the less head formation and head retention you get. In regard to your first quote, Yes there are foam positive hop derrived phenols, but in most beers the concentrations are low and the LTP1 does the heavy lifting. Also, LTP1 can be put back into solution as long as it has not bonded to a fatty acid or other foam negative protein. you can demonstrate this yourself by concentrating a volume of beer foam, mixing it into plain water and carbonating the water. When you force the CO2 out of solution, your water will form a very beer like head.
I am not aware of a study directly addressing the issue of massive blowoff and it's effect on LTP1 levels, but the following is from a study published in the "Journal of the Institute of Brewing" and was written by D.J.Cooper at the International Centre For Brewing and Distilling in Edenburgh. The study is a look at problems with head retention in high gravity brewing, but this particular passage is aplicable to the discussion at hand as it talks about the loss of hydrophobic polypeptides in high gravity beers and the relation to vigorous fermentation:

"The main areas of loss of hydrophobic
polypeptides occurred during kettle boil and ferment
ation (Fig. 3). During the kettle boil, the high gravity wort lost
30% and the low gravity wort lost 57% of the hydrophobic
polypeptides. During fermentation the high gravity wort lost
47% and the low gravity wort lost just 18% of the hydrophobic
polypeptides. It is believed that the fermentation loss is due to
the large amount of foaming that occurs in the initial stages of
fermentation. It was noted that during the early stages of
fermentation the high gravity wort fermented faster and
produced a greater amount of foam. Thus fermenting high
gravity wort forms more foam head than low gravity wort8.
This may be the reason why high gravity wort suffers a more
extreme decrease in hydrophobic polypeptides than low gravity
wort. Further losses are believed to occur due to adhesion onto
the side of fermenters and adsorption onto the cell walls of
yeast, this is certainly a problem for high gravity fermentation
where a higher yeast pitching rate is necessary."

The full study can be found here: http://www.scientificsocieties.org/JIB/papers/1998/1998_104_2_083.pdf

As to the bit you quoted, it seems the author was speaking about a correlation between observed krausen size and head retention, not blowing massive amounts of foam positive proteins out of the beer altogether;)

My own experience has been that on batches where I used a smaller fermenter and a blowoff, they all had head formation and retention issues. Also, to the original poster, I did not mean to seem dismissive, there was sarcasm in my head when I posted. Unfortunately it didn't translate to what I typed. RDWHAHB :mug:
 
I wasn't trying to come off like an ass...I was trying to refute his very scientific seeming points with solid info. It just pisses me off when a fellow brewer comes on here to share or ask a question and someone goes all chicken little on 'em and tells them how f'ed up their beer is going to be. Its unnecessary and I feel defeats the purpose of these forums.

My point was the same as yours...RDWHAHB...no need to condescend because I quote someone who has provided solid info in the past. Denny isn't a "beer god" as you say, but he is experienced. People come on here all the time and spout random **** with nothing to back it up but bluff and bluster and a dime-store vocabulary. I have a research background so if you make a claim, I think you should be able to back it up with either your or a credible source's experience.

Rant over...let's get back to brewin' :mug:

I see you posted again while I was writing mine.
You may notice that in the thread you quoted, the very next post refutes the assertation that the foam positive proteins are lost once pulled out of solution. I hadn't actually followed the link prior to my last post, now I wish I had. Clearly there is a lot of opinion floating about being quoted as fact. As for the above, way to jump to conclusions about someone you never met.
 
I didn't take a picture (yes, I know, a violation), but I had my most recent brew explode in spectacular fashion between Sunday night and when I got home from work Monday. Probably 3 liters of blow-off goop all over the bottom of my fermentation chamber and running out the crack at the bottom of the "door".

I swapped out my 1 L mason jar for a 15 qt stock pot to handle the foam overflow.

Beer will be fine. Head retention will be fine.
 
My own experience has been that on batches where I used a smaller fermenter and a blowoff, they all had head formation and retention issues. Also, to the original poster, I did not mean to seem dismissive, there was sarcasm in my head when I posted. Unfortunately it didn't translate to what I typed. RDWHAHB :mug:

I see you posted again while I was writing mine.
You may notice that in the thread you quoted, the very next post refutes the assertation that the foam positive proteins are lost once pulled out of solution. I hadn't actually followed the link prior to my last post, now I wish I had. Clearly there is a lot of opinion floating about being quoted as fact. As for the above, way to jump to conclusions about someone you never met.

bowiefan, I owe you a big ass sincere apology. I am truly sorry. I did make assumptions that are unwarranted. I did not catch the sarcasm in your original post and thought you were another one of the asshats that post random negative crap when someone comes to us with a problem. You obviously have far more knowledge than I regarding this topic, so please allow me to recant all the assinine things I said. Please accept my apology and if you find yourself in the San Antonio area, I hope you will PM me so I can buy you a beer :mug:
 
apology accepeted, and please accept mine in return, I was lazy and unclear with my first post and bear responsibility in part for the misunderstanding. If I ever find myself heading to SA, I will be sure to get in touch. However, I will expect better than buying me a beer, I will be expecting a homebrew :mug: Likewise, if you are headed to the DC/Baltimore area, let me know, the keezer is always stocked.
 
apology accepeted, and please accept mine in return, I was lazy and unclear with my first post and bear responsibility in part for the misunderstanding. If I ever find myself heading to SA, I will be sure to get in touch. However, I will expect better than buying me a beer, I will be expecting a homebrew :mug: Likewise, if you are headed to the DC/Baltimore area, let me know, the keezer is always stocked.

Civility still lives, even on the interwebz :D

Cheers friend :mug:
 
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