Primary too full, beer volcano!

Using a 5 gallon glass carboy for my primary, it's foaming up crazy... Enough that it popped the air lock off. I have it sitting in a sink with no airlock on it right now and the foam just keeps coming like a school project baking soda peroxide volcano. Lol

Any thoughts on what can be done other than dumping brew out?

Blow Off Tube! Take a large diameter tube (Bert or it fits tightly in you carboy neck and put the other end In a container of sanitizer. That will keep the beer clean and give you an air lock. Alternatively you can find a tube that fits on the center tube of your airlock and do the same thing but in that case you need to keep an eye out that the yeast doesn't clog it. Sanitize everything before you put it back together. Put the airlock back together in a few days when it settles down

Hope that helps.

Sorry, should say "best if it fits...". Damn iphone keyboards

This happened to me on another batch... recipe and picture here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f69/darkness-black-ipa-333549/

Blew the airlock off once - I cleaned it up and thought it was done. The next day it happened again and looked like it did in that picture.

My advice:

a) If possible, insert a blow-off tube instead of an airlock
b) Let it go open until it slows down, and add the airlock then

Given the pressure of CO2 coming out of the carboy, unless you have the beer in a room where particles or other nasties might blow around... it should be okay.

I definitely wouldn't dump it until it's fully fermented and you transfer. If it tastes sour then, oh well... but it just may be your best beer.

The Black IPA in the above link was my favorite beer out of 10-12 AG batches.

+1 on the airlock rig. I also almost had a problem with my plastic bucket fermenter. Couldn't exactly buy a blow off tube for that. So i grabbed an extra S-style airlock, cut off the top part and stuck my racking tube on the end. Every once in a while i would check on it, but it turned out just fine in a pinch.

Brewitt said:

Blow Off Tube! Take a large diameter tube (Bert or it fits tightly in you carboy neck and put the other end In a container of sanitizer. That will keep the beer clean and give you an air lock. Alternatively you can find a tube that fits on the center tube of your airlock and do the same thing but in that case you need to keep an eye out that the yeast doesn't clog it. Sanitize everything before you put it back together. Put the airlock back together in a few days when it settles down

Hope that helps.

Click to expand...

Thanks Brewitt... I had thought about using a primary bucket I had sitting around but couldn't quite get my finger on how to. This worked out great!