Thar she blows!!! Foaming right out the airlock!

Hey all, so I brewed up this 1.090 DFH 90 minute clone yesterday. I had quite a time of doing it.

After a couple hours this thing was already bubbling away. This morning before work, the airlock was pumping away and right before I left I noticed it was a touch brown. Well I get a call from the gf this afternoon that says it is exploding.

So I rushed home to take care of the mess. There's 5G in a 6.5G ale pale and it foamed right up to the top and kept on going. The airlock clogged up and it was spraying about 3ft up in the air through the little holes in the airlock cap. Took me a quite a while to figure out how to contain it. Ultimately, I used a blow off tube.

But wow those yeasties are going to town in there. It was both annoying (the cleaning), and awesome (at least I know something's happening)!

Wow, 'dems some happy yeast a-havin' a party in there! Your yeast must be hop heads too.

I guess I'm lucky to have never used a mop on the ceiling. Hmm, then again I have a fermentation chamber with a lid on it:

Rubbermaid 32 Gal. Roughneck Refuse Can - FG5H3844BLA at The Home Depot

I just attach a blowoff tube during the early stages of every fermentation these days, and then switch to an airlock after the activity has slowed a bit and the 'danger period' for blow offs is over

I blew the top off my first batch of hefeweizen.... wife was pissed it got all over her craft table.... I laughed my ass off, and thought it was cool
she was less pissed after I did some scrubbing

Wow.. sounds like fun

Not sure why people dont want to use airlocks. Most beers wont do this in a 6.5 gal carboy, but why risk it when it costs nothing and it is just as safe.

Use blow-offs people. You WILL eventually make a beer that does this.

Sorry to hear of the mess, but it will be that much more rewarding

Welcome to the "mop the ceiling" club! You can now explode a primary with the best of 'em!

Blowoff tube + every time = not having to worry about this.

Seriously.

DF90 Clone = sounds tasty.

Me = drunk on Ginger Brown ale brewed using a blowoff tube.

Moonpile said:

DF90 Clone = sounds tasty.

Click to expand...

It's my own interpretation so we'll see. I got a recipe off HBT, but the HBS I went to didn't have any of the hops I wanted (i.e., Simcoe, etc) so I had to improvise. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

homebrewflyfish said:

It's my own interpretation so we'll see. I got a recipe off HBT, but the HBS I went to didn't have any of the hops I wanted (i.e., Simcoe, etc) so I had to improvise. I'll let everyone know how it turns out.

Click to expand...

One thing I've learned is that any homebrew attempt at anything sorta kinda like a DF 90 clone, if done in any kind of good faith at all, is going to at the very, very least be as good as something you'd easily pay $6 or $8 for 22oz bombers. If not way better. And that's not even counting how much cooler it will intrinsically be.