Explosion!

Hello all!
After reading a few threads about how to save money and reuse yeast, I decided to give it a go. On Saturday, I transfered a Liberty cream ale out of the primary bucket and into a glass carboy. With the yeast cake that was left in the bucket i poured in an american Pale ale. The yeast was American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056). Things were going great until Saturday night when..KABOOM! The top of the bucket was completly blown off! There was foam everywhere! I cleaned up the mess and put the top back on and refilled the airlock. My question is what are my odds that everthing is alright? Also how could this happen? The airlock wasnt clogged or anything. And finnaly, what can i do in the future to prevent this?

Thanks all

I haven't re-pitched yet, but I've experienced the "explosion". I use a blow-off tube for every brew for the first 2-3 days. It's saved me a few times since. Once things settle down, I put the normal air lock back on my bucket.

your airlock must have been clogged, no other way for the top to blow off. try a blowoff tube as suggested for recycled yeast cakes, they tend to be vigorous ferments. Your beer should be fine, CO2 and foam has a good habit of keeping bad stuff away from your beer.

As Colorado said, when you repitch on a yeast cake, you have a huge quantity of yeast (and that is a good thing). So, you get a very quick and vigorous ferment- which means you can easily have a blow off. No problem at all- set up a blow off tube. Run a tube into the bucket in place of the airlock and grommet and put the end of the tubing into a pitcher of sanitizer solution.

Your beer should be absolutely fine- don't worry about it!

Michael & I had a couple lids blow when we were starting, never a problem.

+1 on the lid blown off. Thank god I use a fermentation chiller as the mess has been contained in a small area. And just FYI the air lock was NOT clogged. I'm going to be using a blow off tube from now on but the gromit in the lid of my buckets will only allow for a 1/4" ID piece of tubing. Is this large enough? Should I drill out a larger hole and ditch the air lock in my primary all together?

+1 vote for the blow-off tube

Hey when death speaks, I listen! I will be looking for the largest gromit I can find tomorow.

I usually remove the grommet and that will allow 3/8 tubing to fit into the hole. Seems to seal up nice, not a problem yet

BLow off tube. Need a blow off tube. Almost lost a lid myself. Actualy got lucky and got to it before it blew. But my lid was bowed to the breaking point. When I pulled myairlock to release the bubble it hissed for a good minute before it felt safe to pop the darn thing off.

I've found that a racking cane stuck in the stopper with my siphoning tube at the end work very well as a blow-off tube. No new holes to drill, and I think the long stretch of vertical tubing help contain the mess - any krausen that makes its way into the blow-off tube will slowly drip back into the fermenter.

Regular airlocks suck!!! If you have decent fermentation they always get clogged and blow the stopper out and it hits the ceiling. Worse yet the stopper gets glued to the lid and then clogs the airlock and the whole lid blows. I always use a 1/2 inch ID hose shoved onto the tube in a 3 piece air lock. and place the other end in a bucket of sanitiser. Better yet is a 1 inch hose, which never clogs. Use 1 inch od hard plastic pvc or stainless tube through a 1 inch ID stopper. You can also get bulkhead barb fittings and mount it in the bucket lid and attach a 1 inch ID hose to that.

DeathBrewer said:

+1 vote for the blow-off tube

Click to expand...

Make that +2 :rockin:

You'll be fine RDWHAHB!