How do I avoid this?

Thanks!

WOW!

Use a blowoff tube for all brews in the future. This way the excess foam can vent safely into a bucket of sanitizer. A blowoff is an easy way to prevent messes from unexpected explosive fermentations.

You should still be able to save this batch by adding a blowoff tube now.

Agreed. A stopper with a hole for a 1/2 blowoff tube should do the trick. Just make sure the keep the tube in the bucket of sanitizer and the bucket of sanitizer BELOW the carboy level so that you won't get any suck back.

Is the Stopper and airlock in there somewhere or did it launch into orbit?

Blow off tube is a good idea. Also, that looks like a 5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon carboy. That doesn't leave a lot of room for krausen to form. Your primary fermenter should always be larger than your batch size to account for this. A 6.5 gallon carboy would have been better. The 5 gallon carboy is fine for a secondary or for smaller batches as a primary.

What kind of beer is this BTW?

Epic first post!!

That stuff looks like spray foam insulation.

I echo the request for the recipe. Looks like it's going to be great!

get yourself about 4 feet of 1 1/4" clear tubing. that size will fit nice and snug into the top of your carboy so you dont need a bung while allowing all the krausen to exit without too much pressure building up. Also use some fermcaps after pitching yeast, that helps keep it low too

I don't know if it is an issue in this case; but the fermenter should be 20% larger than the batch of beer.

Epic first post!!

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You got that right!

What a mess...

Simply beautiful ...........

Well done, well done

JerryMac said:

Thanks!

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Blowoff tube man. So simple man, it's crazy.

Yikes! At what temp did you pitch the yeast? Another thought on avoiding that mess, is to ferment on the lower temp range next time.

Lol thanks for all the advice. I didn't know about a blow off tube, but I do now! I do have a 6.5 gallon carboy. I think the future I will use that as the primary and then use the 5 gallon as the secondary.

I pretty much placed a sheet around the base and let it keep spewing. It calmed down after about 2 hours. Then I put the air lock back in. The airlock actually blew off and hit the ceiling and cracked. There was enough hops in the wort to plug up the airlock. I just hope nothing got inside during that time. I also need to get better and keeping the hops out when I transfer.

It's the Imperial Nut Brown from Brewer's Best.

Phantastik said:

Yikes! At what temp did you pitch the yeast? Another thought on avoiding that mess, is to ferment on the lower temp range next time.

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I think I pitched at 80 degrees, but I put the dry yeast in a 80 degree glass of water first and it was going crazy in there. I think maybe 80 degrees was too warm. But also this did not happy right away. I went to bed 4 hours after putting the airlock on and there was nothing coming through the airlock yet. I got up int he morning and it had exploded in the middle of the night.

So the other thing to do is to get a 6.5g bucket. It looks like you put 5g of wort into a 5g carboy and ... well... the krausen did really well. Basically, you can't ferment 5g of wort in a 5g carboy, but at this point it's fairly obvious.

JerryMac said:

I think I pitched at 80 degrees, but I put the dry yeast in a 80 degree glass of water first and it was going crazy in there. I think maybe 80 degrees was too warm. But also this did not happy right away. I went to bed 4 hours after putting the airlock on and there was nothing coming through the airlock yet. I got up int he morning and it had exploded in the middle of the night.

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Just a bit. One hell of a krausen ya got there!!! So next time, bigger carboy, lower temp (under 70* for ale) and a nifty lil blowoff tube= no mess.

Geez, is that carpet under there?

I've never had a major fermenting disaster before but one thing I do as a precaution is put my fermentor(s) inside of a plastic tub. I picked up a few of these tubs from Home Depot ages ago for about 10 bucks each, and they have served me well. They also act as kind of laundry sink sized vessel which makes it easy to clean whatever is in it.

Please forgive the hastily snapped crappy iPad photo.

You could avoid it by not going into that section of the house.

Hope this helps.

Hi Jerry. I started brewing again, about a year ago, after a 10 year holiday and forgot about the blow out tube. I made a big stout and had the same thing happen in a closet full of close, the smell is finally gone. I haven't forgot it since. Time to break out the carpet cleaner. Thanks for the great pic.

I made a batch of Hefeweizen last year and even in a 6 gallon better bottle, it blew the airlock in our closet. Yeast and trub all over our coats and jackets. Everything gets a blow off tube from now on.