Vigorous First Night

So I brewed my first batch in more than a year last night. I promised my self I wouldn't brew another batch until I had a large, proper brew kettle. My wife got me a 20 gallon boilermaker pot for our anniversary so I brewed last night.

I did a porter for Christmas. The SG read out at 1.070 after a 60 minute boil. I did do steeping grains for 30 minutes prior to adding my extract. I used my new wort chiller to bring the temp down to 70 degrees then pitched to vials of WLP004 Irish ale yeast. (Per MrMalty)

Everything went well, and I was excited to get back into this.

But after the first night of fermentation I checked on it to find a mess. It blew the air lock right out of the carboy. Now, I think I'm still in good shape. If I'm not mistaken, the krausen should act like an airlock its self. I believe that's how Anchor Steam still ferments, with open tanks and krausen fermentations.

What I'm hoping to find out is if i'm correct. Am I still in good shape, or is this batch a waste?









So I put the stopper and air lock back in, so I knew it'd be a smaller hole and better chance of a seal.


here's a video of how fast the krausen is leaving the air lock




thanks in advance.

Micah.

The beer should be completely fine, you are correct in that the escaping CO2 will protect the beer inside. I'd get a blow off tube on that thing right away tho, and consider using when next time for 24hrs or so. Search blowoff tube if you need to on here, tons of info.

I know about blow off tubes from How to Brew. I just never needed one before. I'll go home and set one up on my lunch. should be fine till noon i'd bet. it's still going crazy.

thanks for the info. I'm glad I asked to be sure.

Cool pix!
If you haven't done so already, cut that star-shaped bottom off the airlocks, opening that pipe.

What do you have in mind for temperature control?

You'll probably come out OK. Find a section of hose and run it from the middle tube on the blow off valve into a bucket that you can fill with some sanitizer. Then you can safely blow-off the excess krausen and CO2, without a concern of things contaminating your beer. I'd guess that as long as it's pumping krausen out at that rate, there's little to no concern about contamination. My fear would be when the fermentation dies down a little and the krausen layer settles, you no longer have anything to keep stray yeast and bacteria from finding their way into the carboy.

Good luck, and let us know how it turns out! Welcome back to brewing!
-Kevin

to avoid this happening next time, leave more headspace in the carboy. you filled this one too high. so make a slightly smaller batch, or use a larger fermentation vessel.

if your homebrewshop carries them, a 1" tube fits perfectly in a carboy opening. no need for messing with air locks. see the third pic here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/i-need-pics-reward-offered-300315/index4.html#post3733394

thanks guys....

As for temp control for this batch, that bathtub stays between 65 -72 this time of year. I've been watching it for a couple weeks. For the future, i'm working on getting a spare fridge and controller for fermentation and kegging. that's down the road a bit though.

i'll be checking that carboy regularly. as soon as the fermentation dies enough that I can put the air lock back together i'll do so.

I'll head over and see if they have that 1" tube. Seams like the way to go now that i'm looking at your pics. Thanks.

Hebrews said:

thanks guys....

As for temp control for this batch, that bathtub stays between 65 -72 this time of year. I've been watching it for a couple weeks. For the future, i'm working on getting a spare fridge and controller for fermentation and kegging. that's down the road a bit though.

i'll be checking that carboy regularly. as soon as the fermentation dies enough that I can put the air lock back together i'll do so.

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Ferementing yeast produce heat Some yeasts a lot of heat. Wort temperature can rise 5° to 10°. If you would have had the bathtub full of cold water the blow off may not have happened. Fermentation would have been slower and the krausen wouldn't have risen as high and as fast. Rest of the family may not care for the bathtub being out of use for several days though.

A swamp cooler in the corner of the bathroom can be worked around. A tub or deep tray filled with water, cotton towel that stays wet around the fermentor, and a fan blowing on it. Swamp cooler set up like this can lower the wort temperature about 8°.

its only my wife and I for now, so the bathtub isn't an in convenience. (2 bath house). I started on a Mr Beer, so every batch gets a little better. From Mr. Beer, to 5 gallon batch on a kit, then full boil rather than concentrated, then a properly cooled wort, not 1 hour ice bath. Next time Temp Control will be done. Need that fridge and controller though. I'd like a full stand up fridge that I can put taps on and what not. i'll have to go online and see what other's have done.

Hebrews said:

its only my wife and I for now, so the bathtub isn't an in convenience. (2 bath house). I started on a Mr Beer, so every batch gets a little better. From Mr. Beer, to 5 gallon batch on a kit, then full boil rather than concentrated, then a properly cooled wort, not 1 hour ice bath. Next time Temp Control will be done. Need that fridge and controller though. I'd like a full stand up fridge that I can put taps on and what not. i'll have to go online and see what other's have done.

Click to expand...

Since active fermentation produces heat (sometimes lots of heat!), the actual fermentation temperature may be up to 10 degrees or so higher than ambient.

I'd suggest grabbing a "fermometer"- a stick on thermometer like for aquariums for the outside of the fermenter. One trick to keep fermentation temperatures cool is to put the whole fermenter in a water bath. For example, in a bin or cooler, and then put water up to the beer line around the fermenter. In the summer, I add a frozen water bottle to the water to keep the temperatures in the low 60s. Ideally, with that yeast strain, you'd have the fermentation temperature at about 65 degrees. I suspect it's much warmer, to have an explosion like that! A too-warm fermentation can create some off-flavors, so I'd really attempt to control that temperature.

well it is a bath tub, so I suppose I can just plug it and add cold water? i'll need to make sure that the carboy is well stabilized first though. I don't want it sloshing around in there. That'd be bad.

it was still going like gang buster's when I got home last night. So I left the air lock out for another night. The brew store didn't have the 1" tubing so I had to forgo for now. I'll get some from Williams or More beer before my next batch...

Last night I had put just the bottom of the 3 piece back in to help make sure a good seal was made. about 4 hours after I did that heard a nice boom from the bathroom. Went in and found the air lock in the tub and brown crap all over the bath tub. Awesome. I really hope this doesn't cause a problem. I'm still going to let it finish and i'll bottle, but if I've got off flavors i'll be really sad.

When I got up this morning it had settled down significantly. It's still actively expelling CO2 but not foaming out the top. I went ahead a put the air lock back in and watched it for an hour seamed fine before I left. i'll go home and check it again on my lunch break.


Any one know why it did this? I've never had a batch ferment like this. What did I do differently?

Hebrews said:

Any one know why it did this? I've never had a batch ferment like this. What did I do differently?

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- high OG = lots of sugar
- 72*F is realtively warm so the yeast liked that, too
- i've read that wlp004 can be a fast n' furious in its fermentation
- low amount of headroom in the carboy, so it didn't take much krausen to hit the top

put it all together, and you get what you got :rockin:

so the 1.070 SG and my temp control. Alright then. So I know my next project needs to be a temperature controlled fermentation environment.

Good news. I went home on lunch and found that all is right again. No foaming, just a consistent happy air lock. I can see stuff moving around in the beer, and a nice yeast bed going on the bottom, but i'm confident that i'm in good shape. thanks for the help guys.