Help! Explosive Fermentation - Salvageable?

Last night I started a mixed-berry wheat beer using WPL380.

I had the 30L carboy filled to the 24L mark. After about 12 hours I had a slow but steady fermentation starting. I came home 2 hours later and the airlock was full of muck. Then before my very eyes, the airlock exploded and I had a mess all over the ceiling ...

Note that I have a plastic barrel carboy, not narrow bottle-neck glass variety.

I cleaned up the lid and airlock, loosely fitted the lid and more mess started to appear. I left it like that and let it spew it's froth for most of the afternoon. I've now removed the lid and loosely fitted a large sheet of aluminium foil over the top.

I'm trying to remain calm and assume it will all work out in the end.

I don't have a secondary available to rack in to.

My question to you is, what to do next? Keep the foil for a few days?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Cheers!

See if you can get a bung and some tubing and make something like this https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/blow-off-223407/
If the fermentation was that strong, you should be ok (hope you sanitized the foil). At this point, either you will get an infection or you wont so just keep fermenting and then before bottling or kegging, taste the beer and if it tastes ok then disaster avoided.

Yeah definitely use a blowoff tube. Just stick a length of tubing into the hole the airlock fits in and submerge the other end in a pitcher with sanitizer in it. I've also seen people stick the tubing into the center of the airlock the 3piece type not the s lock type.

Pics or it didn't happen.

Yup blow off tube if you can get it. If not Sanitized aluminum foil will work until you explosively violent fermentation cools down a bit.

Don't stress over it too much, you've still made beer

Thank you for the feedback.

Just thought I'd provide a quick update.

I came home last night to assess the situation. The sanitized aluminium foil was still intact.

As you can see from the images below, I've been to the local hardware store and engineered a new airlock.

When I got up this morning, I could see the remnants of another explosive fermentation, the new device is working perfectly.

I'll be sure to provide an update after I obtain an SG and taste in a few days.

New airlock - just installed



After a nights activity - Note all the muck in the lower part of the tube.



Close up

I like that vessel, where and or who is your source?