Rookie Mistakes

Hi everyone, I am a rookie brewer and just completed my third partial grain/extract brew yesterday of the Alaskan Amber Ale clone. Everything went according to plan until 6:30 this morning. My wife heard a large explosion and I sat there thinking what could have caused that. I immediately determined that my modified one way valve on the fermenter failed and created an airburst explosion that covered the spare bedroom in yeast and wort. The one way valve was essentially a 3/8" hose that I inserted into the hole in the stopper connected to a mason jar gilled with star san water. This worked perfectly on the last brew, not so much on this one. During cleanup I ended up stepping on a tack, getting sprayed in the face with wort which stings pretty bad when I tried putting the valve I bought at the store on to see if it worked, and watching the stopper with valve shooting out of the top of the fermenter like a bottle rocket and again covering the room in yeast and wort. I ended up putting the fermenter in a large plastic keg container and putting a garbage bag over the top to contain any mess. I am out of options so I took the top of the valve off and let the garbage bag cover that to prevent contamination.

Search blow off tube. What size is your fermenter? What temp is the wort fermenting at?

You can get a tube that fits into the fermenter and direct the other end into a bowl of starsan. This is a blowoff tube. It only takes one event like this to get a brewer to switch to a blowoff tube for the first few days and then put an airlock on (you can use the blowoff tube the whole time if you want). For now, you can use foil. The blowout is probably preventing anything from flowing back into the fermenter, let alone bacteria.

Got pictures?