Vigorous Fermentation - Airlock Full of Wort, but not clogged

Just checked my 6.5 gallon glass carboy (for 5 1/2 gallons of wort) after being away for 4 days and noticed that I had a VERY active fermentation where the wort/yeast made it into/and out of the top of the airlock replacing the water. Not too much of a mess other than all over the outside of the carboy.

The airlock doesn't appear to be clogged (bubbling is still occurring), so should I worry about swapping out the airlock before the fermentation stops? I plan on tranferring to transfer to a secondary anyway and will swap out the airlock then.

Anything I should do now or worry about?

I think in the future I may use a blow off tube.

Thanks,
Kevin

i'd put a clean airlock on in pretty short order. the liquid in the airlock is now prone to getting funky and you've got no barrier between your beer and the funk.

just take it out, clean it off with one step and put it back on. If your primary is really chugging along, there wont be much air getting in there as theres a lot of co2 coming out!

Better yet, just sanitize a different airlock and swap them--then you don't have to have the container open for more than a few seconds. (Not that having it open assures contamination or anything...)

3-piece airlocks are dirt cheap: no reason not to own several of them.

cweston said:

3-piece airlocks are dirt cheap: no reason not to own several of them.

Click to expand...

Very true, Its nice to keep 3 or 4 stashed away for when they mysteriously disappear.

Thanks everyone for your responses....I swapped out the airlock. I wasn't sure if by doing that I would somehow ruin the batch.

I'm transferring to the secondary tonight - will see how it tastes so far.

Thanks again!