my batch from hell!

So I am on my third batch and was really excited about my new gear and recipe. I bought a 50' wort chiller and a stir plate as new toys for this batch. My recipe was for an imperial ipa. Everything went great in brew night. I mean perfectly. Then yesterday came. While shopping for groceries I get a call from a frantic wife that the downstairs is flooded! I get home to find that I left the chiller hose connected to the outside spigot and still leading into the kitchen window. My daughter thought since yesterday was such a beautiful day in Cali that she wanted to play in the water. Well.....my pergo floors are now warped.
Got the floors dried up after pulling some boards from the floor cuz it was puddling under the pergo and trapped by the vapor barrier. Then woke up this morning with the house reeking of beer. The damned blow off the guys at my LHBS sold me was a fit over the airlock type. Too small! Got clogged and blew the entire bung out spraying my bathroom with wort! Damn. Now I have to clean and paint the bathroom.
Good news though. I'm still obsessed with the hobby and scored a running 22cf side by side on cl for free! May need to convert it to a chamber fast so I don't ruin another paint job.

Wow, you really had a rough time with that batch! I always fear I'll somehow leave the propane going and our whole house explodes. Even though I'm brewing outside at least 10 feet from the front porch, you never know. Maybe you should move production outside. And bathroom walls should be tiled, not painted. Easy to clean and really not that difficult to do yourself. I sure hope the beer turns out great!

Reason # 1 that I do my boil, chilling outside on the deck and ferment in my backroom of my basement (concrete floors and no paint).

I have NOT needed a blow off since I started making sure to chill properly and control fermentation temps.

Not preaching, temp is just something I wish I'd learned about earlier. It took a batch of banana beer to make me sit up and take notice.

Maybe hold off on the bathroom painting for awhile.

Wort temp was @67. That is not too warm. I am very aware of my temps. I have an AC unit in bathroom that keeps it at about 63°. What happened was the krausen clogged the small spout in the actual airlock that the tube was.connected to. I am assuming it was the size being too small. The vapors for trapped and blew the bung out. Bung, airlock fitting, and hose were all still attached to each other. I looked in the airlock tube and it was packed tight with krausen. I think the key here is a 1" blow off tube. Oh, and start brewing in the garage. Lol.

And another funny thing was that I couldn't find the bung anywhere. It actually blew out of the shower install and was laying behind the toilet. That was some force!

mike024 said:

Wort temp was @67. That is not too warm. I am very aware of my temps. I have an AC unit in bathroom that keeps it at about 63°. What happened was the krausen clogged the small spout in the actual airlock that the tube was.connected to. I am assuming it was the size being too small. The vapors for trapped and blew the bung out. Bung, airlock fitting, and hose were all still attached to each other. I looked in the airlock tube and it was packed tight with krausen. I think the key here is a 1" blow off tube. Oh, and start brewing in the garage. Lol.

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Not to derail, but how do you know the wort temp? If you pitched at 67F it likely rose to at least 73F during fermentation, despite the room being cooler.

I chill to 63F or so and pitch. I watch closely and take measures if the wort gets over 68F.

Wort thermometer.....

OK.......

I have not used a blowoff in 8 years or so, 2-300 batches. Temp is usually the culprit, although an over filled fermenter will do it too.

Interesting. The batch size was a 5.5. I used whirfloc and servomyces which seem to create a lot of foam every time I use them together. The foam was at about the 6 gallon mark. I figured it would subside during the lag phase and leave enough room for the krausen. I did use a starter from a stir plate and another smack pack. This was recommended by the LHBS. I'm thinking maybe the yeast went ape **** and had a short lag time. Could I have over pitched? Could the foam help this effect?
I have already concluded I need to check my thermometers for accuracy so I can be sure it wasn't the temps.

I can relate to horror stories early on, I imagine most people can.

Last night while sloshing the cooled wort around, before pitching yeast, the spigot on the bucket popped off and I had a fire hose of chilled wort shooting everywhere! **** happens!

Brew4stl said:

I can relate to horror stories early on, I imagine most people can.

Last night while sloshing the cooled wort around, before pitching yeast, the spigot on the bucket popped off and I had a fire hose of chilled wort shooting everywhere! **** happens!

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Best reason I've heard yet for not fermenting in a bottling bucket....

I cut off the bottom ends of my three piece airlocks after reading about it here. Seems to help- I haven't had one clog up yet. *knock wood*