Tons of Blow off

Just started a weizen beer last night and the fermentation is going insane. It has not even been 24 hours but I had to switch from a fermentation bubble lock to a blow off tube using my caning rod into an ale pale. So far there has been a lot of blow off and a ton of krausen (sp).

I think that about half a gallon may have been blown off into the bucket. Is this normal? The rod is not sticking down into the wort, just a little past the stopper. Thinking that I may need to drain some out of the blow-off bucket as its getting close to the top.

Thanks for any advice and comments.

does your blow off tube fit on top of your airlock? I usually have my blow off go into a bowl of starsan, and I clean the airlock and tube as needed. should stop soon.

What temperature is the beer fermenting at? (the beer temp, not ambient/room temp).

VTBrewer - No it does not. Currently I have the caning rod stuck into the rubber cork that the airlock would normally fit into. Its a good tight fit and is going into a bucket full of water.

SPLASTiK - Not sure. The liquid crystal thermometer on the side of the glass carboy currently says 77 degrees which I find hard to believe as it is easily 70 in my basement. I'd have to stick a thermometer straight into the wort to check since glass is not a good conductor.

This is my experience every time I brew a hefe or dunkle weisen. Extremely active fermentation, lots of blowoff, and having to empty the blowoff bucket at least once.

Very normal from my experience.

You must have the one piece S bubble shaped airlock. The three piece ones are good to have for a blow off tube rigged to a bucket.

Raveontec said:

SPLASTiK - Not sure. The liquid crystal thermometer on the side of the glass carboy currently says 77 degrees which I find hard to believe as it is easily 70 in my basement. I'd have to stick a thermometer straight into the wort to check since glass is not a good conductor.

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Those stick on thermometers are actually very accurate on glass and I'd say 77 wouldn't be uncommon if the room is 70. Fermentation produces heat and can get the beer up to like 10 degrees hotter than room temp. Yeast go crazy and ferment very wildly at those temperatures, especially wheat yeasts. Most people try to keep the beer temperature for most ales under 70 degrees to avoid excessive flavors produced by the yeast, weizen's generally get fermented around 62-64.

Thanks everyone for all the advice. I really appreciate it as this is only my second brew and the first took almost 68 hours to start visible fermentation.

At this point the temperature has dropped to about 73 degrees and will likely drop another 1-2 degrees. The yeast looks to be flocculating as the wort is less cloudy and I see stuff sitting at the surface below the krausen. Probably about a gallon has been blown off into the secondary bucket. Which leads me to another question...

Since I probably only have about 4 gallons out of my 5 gallon batch should I use less priming sugar than the recipe calls for when bottling? My instinct tells me to calculate the percentage lost and subtract that percentage of sugar.

Yes, that would be appropriate.

wiezen beers go crazy no matter what tempurature it ferments at. however, the ferm temp will make the beer taste different. warmer gives more bananna, colder gives more vanilla. i start mine at 72 ambient for a few days, then drop to 65 for the rest of the time. gives a nice balance.

VTBrewer - Thanks for the validation. My last beer was way too carbonated.

blackwaterbrewer - Good to know. I need to get a fridge for my beer so I can mess with the temperatures and brew lagers.

Disaster hopefully averted.
So I pulled out the airlock and it spray krausen nearly to the rafters and certainly all over me. Not like a champaign bottle exploding more like a slightly sharken up can of diet coke so not a major mess.
Anyway, the only hose I have doesn't fit on the airlock so I stuck my racking cane in the grommet on the bucket and attached my hose to that. I put the other end of the hose in a 1/2 gal tupperware bowl and covered the tip of the hose with vodka (I dont have any starsan right now) - cheap vodka. Within 5 mins the krausen had reached the top of the racking cane and was headed down the hose. I'll see what it looks like in the morning.

Raveontec said:

VTBrewer - Thanks for the validation. My last beer was way too carbonated.

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Might want to play with the corn sugar amt then, even beyond adjusting the 1oz:51 gallon ratio for whatever your volume is. I pretty much stay right at that for most of my brews, but I know other brewers that have different tastes and are closer to .8oz/gallon bottled.

Style plays a lot into it as well.

I've been meaning to post something about the ammount of corn sugar to use. So are you saying that you use 1oz/1 gallon? Papazian says to use 3/4 cup per 5 gallon batch. And i've always seen it come in 5oz packages and to use it all. 3/4 cup is way less volume than 5oz takes up. I have a great scale and need a sold measurment to use. thanks