Wheat beer fermentation

I have brewed two American wheat beers. The first time I did it, I was scrubbing the walls in the bathroom, as the krausen?? clogged the airlock and the lid blew off the fermenter in the middle of the night. Wife was real happy about that one. This time, I used a blow off hose, and a bunch of stuff is coming through the hose. I have never seen this happen on any other beer I have brewed. Is this pretty typical for a wheat beer? Have others experienced this on any other style?

Hmm, I brew a couple wheat beer recipes and have never had a huge blowoff with them. Maybe it's related to the yeast strain you're using. Or, perhaps your recipe is an especially high gravity beer?

I don't have this problem with Wyeast 3068 and my wheat beer. I hear that dry yeasts can be very active this way, though.

What yeast are you using? What ferm temp?

yeah, i've also heard about this with wheat beers but i've done 2 and never had a problem... although i did have really healthy fermentations.

+1 for the yeast type and temps...and are you making a starter? i assume you are using buckets...how many gallons are going into it? maybe its just lack of headspace+warm temps+healthy yeast

Danstar Munich tends to cause a large blowoff. Fermenting at slightly cooler temps does help reduce this.

I can sorta vouch for this. All 3 hefes that I've done with White Labs Hefeweizen yeast have been pretty explosive. All of them have required blowoff tubes. Then again, I was fermenting at room temp, which was somewhere around 75 degrees.

Either way, no blowoff = big mess.

Yes, I did use a dry yeast both times, safale us-05. I put about 5.5 galons in the fermenter, a bucket, and the og was 1.043 on the most recent one. The air temperature in the room is about 68 degrees.

Thanks for the info. At this point it has slowed down a bit, so no worries now. I was just curious if this is something I should expect with this style. I guess it mainly has to do with the yeast.

I also use US-05 for my American Wheat, AAMOF I got a 10 gal batch of this beer fermenting in the basement right now. Blow-up accidents do happen, but not every time. And the beer is fantastic, well worth the risk. I do use blow-off tubes, and I also found that simply making sure you don't have more then 5 gal in your fermenter works pretty well as well. My OG in that beer is ~1.052.