Blow Off Tube

I have been reading quite a bit about using a blow off tube for wheat beers since they tend to ferment pretty violently. I plan on brewing the NB American Wheat beer in the next week or so and want to use a blow off so I don't paint my bathroom with wort. Problem is I am using a 6.5 gallon Ale Pail from Midwest and the hole where the airlock would go in doesn't look big enough for what I see as a blow off. Does it matter what size the tube is?

I have left the liquid out the airlock and attach the hose to it. It worked well

Pop out the grommet and stick in a 3/8 OD tube to a bottle of water

The only hose I have it the hose that came with the kit to rack with. Should I get a bigger diameter?

Nope - that one works fine.

hoppymonkey said:

I have left the liquid out the airlock and attach the hose to it. It worked well

Click to expand...

The first time I needed a blowoff I did some version of this with a barbed brass fitting that screwed into the top bowl of and airlock.

You could also sacrifice an airlock and cut the long bottom piece off to make the union between the "black grommet" and come 3/8 tube.

A handy tip or two I figured out:
1) Watch the temperature during the initial active ferment as it can rise pretty quick. I left my last batch in the basement at about 68 degrees after pitching the yeast and by morning it had gone nutty blowing off foam and had heated itself to about 80 degrees. I lost a lot of good beer to overactive yeast (and probably smooth taste).
2) Put the end of your blow off tube in a bucket with a little water and dishwasher rinse agent to knock the foam down to liquid. Twice now I have had overflowing bowls of foam.

I use a 3 piece airlock with the little cross members on the bottom removed attached to a 5/8 ID tube. I put it into a 1/2 gallon growler half full of sanitizer solution. This works pretty well for me, I just have to clean it a couple times if I have a heavy fermenter. When it stops being angry, i pop a fully assembled airlock in its place.

I don't use a blowoff hose/tube, and made two changes in my methods in my first year of brewing that makes one unnecessary: 1) I make sure I chilled the wort <70F....this seems to produce a less "peaky" fermentation, with no foaming out of the krausen, and 2) I switched to a 7 gallon US Plastics bucket, which gives somewhat more headspace. My basement runs from the high 50's to the low 60's year-round, so I have no trouble maintaining a fermentaton temperature in the low end of the range. In any event, I've probably done around 50 batches, and no problem just using one or the other of the two common plastic airlocks..