went out of town for 3 days - primary blew all over the place. am i hosed?

I should have known this was going to happen :cross:

brewed a belgian wit on Sunday, and used a white labs yeast (didn't make a starter). went out of town on Monday morning, just got back (wednesday evening), and found the cap of the airlock sitting on the floor, and the center part lying across the room.

am i up the creek with this batch? I've never had that happen before. I just took off the airlock & bung, and put one of the orange carboy 'caps' on it with a blowoff tube into some water.

should i bother cleaning & sanitizing a keg, or should i just throw this batch away?

Nah, she'll be right.
You just made a mess that is all. The beer will still be the same.

dibby33 said:

Nah, she'll be right.
You just made a mess that is all. The beer will still be the same.

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i sure hope so.

it could have been a LOT messier, so I suppose that's good.

Its always worth it, IMO, to see it through until the end unless you're SURE that its contaminated. Since you just lost two pieces of your airlock, I think that you're fine.

My wit gave me an ubelievable krausen as well.

Don't underestimate the barrier power of a good krausen, laden in CO2.

You should be fine. No loss if you see it through.

Now just think of an appropriate name..."Big Blow Belgian"

I say it time and time again...

Bukkake happens when you least expect it.

BierMuncher said:

Now just think of an appropriate name..."Big Blow Belgian"

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Sounds like a beer that will go *down* well.

I lost an entire lid on one of my hefs twice. Didn't even bother blowing out the airlock, just took out the whole lid. I was home for one of them, it was pretty loud, and scared the hell out of SWMBO.

It came out to be one of my best batches, so don't sweat it, if losing the entire lid didn't hurt anything, losing the airlock is pretty minor. With the amount of co2 escaping to cause an explosion, there's really nothing that would have fallen in. Just consider yourself lucky to have had such a vigerous ferentation.

I think it may have something to do with the wheat, my fruit wheat got to bubbling so fast it wasn't even bubbling anymore, airlock center piece was just stuck to the top with a steady stream of co2 blowing out from underneath, now after 3 days down to 1 per second or so.

Cheesefood said:

I say it time and time again...

Bukkake happens when you least expect it.

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aahaha ... i was actually thinking about calling it Bukkake Belgian.