First batch ever! Can u say violent?

So after a successful ipa brewing evening fermenting began roughly 10 hours later. At 70 degree I knew I had a serious ferment goin on. I cleaned the air lock sanitized and reinstalled 3 or 4 times . Losing air foaming all over and so on. Then came the lid popping lol! I eventually installed a blow off tube on the air lock . Much better but needs to be bigger maybe 3/4 " or so due to the large volume of co2 barfing out. By the way this is a brewers best ipa. Smells amazing! My newbie question is ..... After I finally removed the lid and washed and sanitized it ( very quickly ) . I started to wonder if that layer of goop stuck to the bottom of the bucket lid was crucial to keep? Was it most of my yeast? Or my hops? Or anything that I really wanted? Because I washed it right down the drain ! Good news is it's still bubbling hard this morning !!

Just a addition to the lid popping I was talking bout. It never completely blew the lid off only one side was popping up. But it had blown some goop around the rim making it hard to just press back . Even this morning it had o e side popped up! Bout to put bricks on it lol

you just washed off some of the kreussen. It's yeast and proteins and hop material. No big deal as long as you sanitized the lid when you put it back on. In the future use a blow off tube for the first several days of fermentation or get a bigger fermentation vessel with more head space.

Yeah I seriously doubt I will use that little air lock again! Seriously why would I? But thanks for the speedy response! So just curious .... It's a 5 gallon batch in a 6.5 bucket... How much more room would I need ? Or is it more of the fact that it couldn't properly expel the gasses from that little plastic air lock? Bigger diameter blow off tube sounds like the answer to me but I'm just on my first batch. Lots to learn! Great forum you guys have here!

6.5 gallon bucket should be plenty. Sounds like you just either had a really active batch or you fermented on the warm side. Try to keep your ferm temps in the mid 60's and use a blow off tube for the first few days of fermentation.