Northern Brewer - Caribou Slobber

I cooked my extract batch yesterday, topped off to 5 gal & pitched a rehydrated dry yeast pack... Came home today & the airlock has wort blown into it & a lil bit on the top of my bucket lid... Wondering if I should take the air lock off quick & cover the hole and quick wash/sanitize and put the air lock back on?

Sanitize and you should be fine. The foaming action will push things out not in. Get some saran wrap and sanitize it first. Take off the lid and drop the saran over the top to keep out big floaties in the air and clean the lid and replace. Blow off tube next time!

One of my favorite brews BTW. done it 3 times. Add an extra 3LBS of LME - you won't regret it!

How do you blowoff a 3 piece airlock on a plastic bucket, attach a tube into the upper part of the inserted piece?

Larzean said:

How do you blowoff a 3 piece airlock on a plastic bucket, attach a tube into the upper part of the inserted piece?

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Take the top off and the inside floater, then put a tube on the inside part of the air lock..

This beer was awesome. Although I brew AG now, I may revive this or try to convert it to grain (if NB hasn't already done the work for me).

I believe I ended up using Safale-04 or 05 yeast for this one, and didn't have a problem.
However, I always find new ways to combat explosions.

I tried putting a tube on the inside piece of the air lock, and that resulted in problems. You can get clogging within the small openings on the bottom of the air lock.
I then tried just shoving vinyl tubing straight in the bucket hole. I found that the tube was a little too small, and resulted in way too much pressure within the bucket (it started to whistle on the sides of the lid). It seems the krausen sticks too much on the tube, and requires a lot of pressure sometimes from within the bucket.
Now, when I use buckets and I expect blow off, I use aluminum foil. I crack open the a side of the lid, sanititze, and cover in sanitized aluminum foil. Seems to work for me.

Hope I helped

What size of buckets do you use?

6.5 I think it is

I've seen the suggestion of sawing off the bottom tip of the 3 piece airlock where the cross of plastic is. This is to keep the end from clogging up making the blow off tube useless.

kh54s10 said:

I've seen the suggestion of sawing off the bottom tip of the 3 piece airlock where the cross of plastic is. This is to keep the end from clogging up making the blow off tube useless.

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I would be a little concerned about this, as tiny scratches from the cut could harbor bacteria. Whether or not this could make a big impact at high krausen, I don't know.

xsists said:

Take the top off and the inside floater, then put a tube on the inside part of the air lock..

Click to expand...

Here's my first yeast explosion. I tried many different ways to put on a blow off tube. Here's my end results.

Check out this video on YouTube:

Larzean said:

6.5 I think it is

Click to expand...

I've always used a 7.9 gallon fermenter and never had problem with wild fermentations. Not sure if that's why or if I've just been lucky.

I would agree with wSelwyn - if you cut the bottom of a three-piece airlock it gets very rugged on the bottom. Expect it to be expendable at that point. It's also really annoying to cut!

The best solution for bucket brewers IMHO is Fermcap-S, you just add a few drops and don't have to worry at all:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/fermcap-s-1-oz.html

But not a lot of people happen to have that kicking around, so hopefully a tube in the lid hole will work for you until it dies down a bit.

Hope you enjoy the kit!

Also, we do sell an AG version of Caribou Slobber:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/caribou-slobber-all-grain-kit.html

TheNorthernBrewer said:

Also, we do sell an AG version of Caribou Slobber:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/caribou-slobber-all-grain-kit.html

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Off topic: YES! Thank you! I never noticed this before. I'll be ordering soon.