My first explosion...

Well, only my fourth cider attempt and I've now experienced my first explosion. Saturday went and picked-up a 1/2 bushel of locally grown mutsu apples, juiced them down and strained the juice prior to dumping in a sanitized 1 gallon car boy. Added 1 camden tablet and waited 24hrs.what was produced was a beautifully colored and fragrant juice. I removed about 4 cups from the final gallon, racked the remaining 90% of juice into a sterile carboy, and proceeded to add the wyeast whitbread yeast to approx 2 cups of juice. Added this mix to the new carboy with juice. I then proceeded to add approx 12 oz of local honey to the remaing 2 cups. Gave it a quick stir and added the final product to the carboy full of juice. Shook everything well, for the 20th time, and attached a new stopper and airlock full of distilled water. Well, all of this was last night. Got up this morning to check the new batch, and found things were bubbling well at about 1 - 2 bubbles every 3 seconds. Proceeded to go to work. Returned this afternoon around 7:00 to find my cider fermenting closet covered in a stouty apple juice explosion, and the airlock so incredibly full of bubble over, that I could barely remove the stuff with a bamboo skewer. The remaining batch still smelled and looked great. I went ahead and poured out some juice, and closed-up again with a fresh airlock and stopper. Needless to say I'm a little worried. Just hoping that everything will turn-out ok. This batch (Mutsus) of home juiced cider went very differently than my first batch (Pink Ladys). Any thoughts

I'd pull off the airlock, so it doesn't happen again. You could cover the opening with a napkin, or with a sanitized towel, or something else that won't "hold in" the cider and gas.

You could also run a hose from your fermenter into a container filled with sanitizer. All the krausen will simply go into the container instead of an airlock! Keep this in mind when picking your container as to the fact that you will want extra room.

Happy Brewing!

That is a great suggestion frostyone. Quick question, when you juice your own apples, I've noticed that sometimes you get this separated head, kind of like an ultra thick pasrons collar. Is there anything I can to to mitigate this. I strained the heck out of the processed juice, but I still had this thick head even after I removed about 2 inches of this stuff. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. LTJ