High gravity brews need blowoff tube

I just yesterday brewed up a belgian strong ale kit. The og was about 1.06 and the final abv should be right around 9%. I looked today and the fermentation is moving along nicely as there is already about an inch of foam on top. Should I go to homedepot and pick up some 3/8 tube for a blow off? I dont want beer all over my living room.

I would say better safe than sorry. Especially if you incorporated any wheat or oats in your recipe. I did a wit with a much lower OG and it blew off in my 6 gallon carboy.

I had a nice dark beer for my first batch. Og was recomended at 1.25ish and I ended up nicknaming it " my little volcano "

Now I dont brew anything without a blow off tube It is not fun shampooing the carpets all day.

Ah, the perils of fermenting in the living room. I'm so glad I have a basement now. The episode with the hops being stuck in the blowoff tube did not end well.

Anyway, yes, get a blowoff tube if there is any doubt and you have the fermenter in finished space.

There's a lot to be said for using 6.5 gallon carboys for 5 gallon batches.

I have to ask: Why would you ever NOT use a blowoff tube? Even though I brew mostly in the bathtub of our guest BR, I use one routinely. I have had foam make it to the blowoff jug in 3 of the 5 beers I've brewed. This is with a 6 gallon Better Bottle and 5 gallon batches. Obviously, with only 5 beers under my belt, I'm a total noob, but it seems to me that it's too cheap an insurance policy not to do it.

jldc said:

I have to ask: Why would you ever NOT use a blowoff tube? Even though I brew mostly in the bathtub of our guest BR, I use one routinely. I have had foam make it to the blowoff jug in 3 of the 5 beers I've brewed. This is with a 6 gallon Better Bottle and 5 gallon batches. Obviously, with only 5 beers under my belt, I'm a total noob, but it seems to me that it's too cheap an insurance policy not to do it.

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Because sometimes it's just not necessary. If I'm doing a hefe with WLP300, then I attach a blowoff immediately. I recently fermented a 1.088 IIPA with 2 packs of Nottingham in a bucket because I knew that with Nottingham at 65F I wasn't going to need a blowoff tube.

As a general rule, however, I'd recommend always using one. When I'm using a strain of yeast for the first time, I almost always attach a blowoff.

xxdcmast said:

I just yesterday brewed up a belgian strong ale kit. The og was about 1.06 and the final abv should be right around 9%. I looked today and the fermentation is moving along nicely as there is already about an inch of foam on top. Should I go to homedepot and pick up some 3/8 tube for a blow off? I dont want beer all over my living room.

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An OG of 1.06 and ABV of 9% works out to a FG of about 0.99 and apparent attenuation of 114.2%. There's something wrong with your math. You probably won't get to 7% or your OG was way higher.

oinyo said:

I had a nice dark beer for my first batch. Og was recomended at 1.25ish and I ended up nicknaming it " my little volcano "

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An OG of 1.25 works out to 51.7 Brix . . i.e., 51.7/48.3 sugar to water ratio. That's like a thick syrup. Are you sure?

(Not to be confrontational or anything . . it's just that I've been hunting down the story behind my exceptionally dry first brew and I've been figuring out all this OG/FG/ABV/Brix/Plato/Attenuation stuff and these numbers caught me as being a little funny.)

I've been using http://www.brewcalcs.com/ for this stuff.