Help! She's gonna blow!

wow, doing my first big belgian, it's the AHS clone for La Fin Du Monde. Followed instructions to a T, the OG came in at a whopping 1.092 vs. 1.085, even with adding a little extra water (closer to 5.5 gallons). Made a 3 step, 1.5L, 1.5L, 1.0L starter with Wyeast 1214. Brewed last night and cooled to about 78, dumped into the primary (bucket). Put that and my 2 L flask with my decanted yeast in my ferm chamber (freezer) and set the temp (probe measuring air) to 68. That was 12:30 AM. About 9 hours later I shook the heck out of the primary, pitched the yeast and stuck a blow off in the bucket lid grommet hole, other end in a growler with water.

Fermentation started within 3 hours, could hear it chugging. At this point, it looks like the lid is about to blow, even with the tube in it. I've removed the tube 3 times to rinse the foam out and make sure it's not clogged, and everytime I get a geyser of foam. Should I be worried about the lid blowing off even with the blow off tube in there? The hole is not that big, I think it's maybe 1/4 inch tubing? I am afraid to lean over and look at it, the lid is bulging so bad I'm afraid of catching an exploding lid in the face.

The temp strip on the bucket says about 76 and I taped the controller probe just now to the side of the bucket and insulated with a taped on, folded towel. it says 75 degrees.

The temp range for this yeast is 68-78 so I'm still in that range but I set my controller to 70 with the probe on the bucket to try to cool it down a little. Any advice? I don't want an exploding mess in my freezer or a ruined batch.

I had the same exact thing happen... that small of a blow off tube easily gets clogged no matter what you do (you're talking a regular plastic bucket with with a tube through the airlock hole, right?).

The only thing I could think of to do was to let it foam out the hole, then when it slowed down enough, replace with a 3 piece airlock.

Crap so it's possible that even with this tube I could have the lid blow off? Dang it. I guess I should remove the hose tonight, let it foam through the hole and put the bucket in something bigger to catch the mess?

bd2xu said:

Crap so it's possible that even with this tube I could have the lid blow off? Dang it. I guess I should remove the hose tonight, let it foam through the hole and put the bucket in something bigger to catch the mess?

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Oh yeah, if the lid's a bulgin' like that you know the air isn't getting out. Maybe put a sanitized glass upside down over top to be safe, but with all that foam coming out there's very little chance of something else getting in (unless you have evil fruit flies)

bd2xu said:

Crap so it's possible that even with this tube I could have the lid blow off? Dang it. I guess I should remove the hose tonight, let it foam through the hole and put the bucket in something bigger to catch the mess?

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I use the same method you're using with 1/4 tubing in the air lock hole. If you don't have much hop debris or a gross amount of break material in there, you should be ok. I've had some touch and go moments myself where I had to keep swaping out fresh blow off tubes until things calmed down, but I've never had a lid pop. My friend on the other hand brewed at my place once and didn't strain his wort. Dumped the whole contents of the BK, pellet hops and all into the fermenter. I didn't know this at the time. The next day I heard a strange noise and didn't think much about it. I wandered downstairs at some point and was astonished to find his bucket lid sitting a few feet away and beer foam overflowing out of the bucket. I had to sanitize a starter jug and siphon off a 1/2 gallon of brew and slap on a sanitized lid. Batch turned out ok though. Now that I use ferm cap I don't have blow offs anymore. A lot less hassle.

So I put the bucket in the kitchen sink and am just letting the foam come out through the hole. I figure once it calms down a little I will put the blowoff back on.

However, if this lid somehow blows off here in the kitchen it will be the end of my brewing days (best case) and I could get divorced! 😄 So looking for some real world experience here, do I need to worry about the airlock hole itself clogging and causing the lid to blow? The foam is pouring out pretty well.

bd2xu said:

Crap so it's possible that even with this tube I could have the lid blow off? Dang it. I guess I should remove the hose tonight, let it foam through the hole and put the bucket in something bigger to catch the mess?

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The hole is about the same size whether you leave it open or put a tube in it. I would stick with the blow off tube and swap out/clean as necessary until things calm down.

Edit: Doing this will keep the hole from clogging, which would be a bad thing.

well with the length of the tube there's more back pressure, with no tube the foam can just pour through the hole, which it's doing. I'm just worried about the hole actually clogging now and a real disaster

bd2xu said:

well with the length of the tube there's more back pressure, with no tube the foam can just pour through the hole, which it's doing. I'm just worried about the hole actually clogging now and a real disaster

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That's why I recommend using the tube. The tube will keep the hole clear. If anything starts to clog it will be the tube, in which case clean it or swap it out as needed. In my experience there is usally a 5-10 hour window of crazy blow off and then things should calm down. You might be in for a long night. You could siphon some off to stop the blow off and solve the problem altogether.

bd2xu said:

well with the length of the tube there's more back pressure, with no tube the foam can just pour through the hole, which it's doing. I'm just worried about the hole actually clogging now and a real disaster

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Exactly. The airlock hole won't clog, the tube will. Trust me.

I mean it could, but unless you want to stand there and watch it/change it out all night, you have much better chances with the airlock hole, sans-tube.

ChessRockwell said:

Exactly. The airlock hole won't clog, the tube will. Trust me.

I mean it could, but unless you want to stand there and watch it/change it out all night, you have much better chances with the airlock hole, sans-tube.

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Yep that's what I'm going to do since when I had the tube in, I noticed the bubbling in the growler would stop for long periods and the lid was very swollen, and tight as hell when I pushed on it. If its just air going through the tube no problem but when it's all foam like this, I think pushing the foam through the tube creates back pressure.

What I'm worried about is temp now, bucket strip says 78 + and the ambient temp is 74, just jacked it down to 70. It's going down to 59 tonight, 66 right now. I could put it outside to cool it down but I read some articles tonight from brewers at commercial breweries of Belgians and one said that once the yeast gets going don't try to cool the wort temp down. Should start cool, in the 60s, and let it ramp. He said if you cool it to slow it then a lot of the time it will stop and not restart, have to pitch new. So I guess I'll roll the dice, it IS a Belgian so ill have a high ester Belgian I guess.

There are folks who just use foil over the top of their carboys so that should work with an airlock that doesn't have water in it.

Well right now the foam is just pouring out nonstop so I'm not worried about stuff getting in. I am setting my alarm for every two hours to check it and when it's slowed I will replace the blow off.

bd2xu said:

What I'm worried about is temp now, bucket strip says 78 + and the ambient temp is 74, just jacked it down to 70. It's going down to 59 tonight, 66 right now. I could put it outside to cool it down but I read some articles tonight from brewers at commercial breweries of Belgians and one said that once the yeast gets going don't try to cool the wort temp down. Should start cool, in the 60s, and let it ramp. He said if you cool it to slow it then a lot of the time it will stop and not restart, have to pitch new. So I guess I'll roll the dice, it IS a Belgian so ill have a high ester Belgian I guess.

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Yeah that's a tough one... I'd probably just roll with it too, nothing wrong with a high-ester Belgian. Just hope for no fusels!

Well I just racked this one to secondary tonight. It smells awesome, I didn't taste it but the SG is at 1.015 so great results there. This beer was supposed to have an OG of 1.085 and FG of 1.019 but my numbers were 1.092 and 1.015. So instead of about 8.7% this is going to be 10.1%... Wow! According to Unibroue web site the original is 9%. I don't understand how my OG was so far off since I followed instructions to a T, and I definitely did not have to little volume going into my primary, it was too high if anything. I did do a full wort boil with 6 gallons instead of the partial the instructions suggested. Oh well I will let it sit in secondary a couple weeks at 70-72 and then bottle. For the last week I had the primary in a water bath with aquarium heaters to keep the temp around 76.

Are you sure you measured the volume correctly? Boil off rates differ and the standard increments on fermenters aren't right. I use a dowel marked at gallons and halfs.

Positive, I used my marked stirring paddle that I marked at 5 and 6 gallons for my boil kettle and measured in the boil kettle. Also after I transferred last night to my secondary it was right at the 5.25 mark. I'm going to punch these numbers into beer smith to see what it says the OG should have been.

It could be the points per pound per gallon you get from the extract. Some extract is "denser" than what is loaded in the programs.