Exploding Carboy

Berkbeer said:

They have also started cutting the cross bars off of the bottom of their airlocks in order to minimize the chance of this happening again.

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I've done the same thing. When I started brewing, those crossbars were not there. I don't know who decided to add them or why they thought it was a good idea.


TL

Just in case anyone is having 2nd thoughts about this issue, this happened to me last night. I dropped my carboy about a month ago and hadn't brewed anything in it since. A big batch of 5.5 gallons and a heavy fermentation equaled coming home to a ruined carpet. Hooray.

o0weno said:

Just in case anyone is having 2nd thoughts about this issue, this happened to me last night. I dropped my carboy about a month ago and hadn't brewed anything in it since. A big batch of 5.5 gallons and a heavy fermentation equaled coming home to a ruined carpet. Hooray.

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You dropped the carboy, and it didn't sustain visible damage?

if fermentation can blow the lid off of a bucket then it certainly could blow up a carboy...

just my 2 cents....

Another plus for foam control drops.

Hey this just happened to me the other day. My carboy blew the door off of the cupboard it was i and glass was every where. I know that I did not have a defective carboy. i had a blow off tube in it. What happened was when it ferments and the overflow came out it clogged the tube because of the hops I had put in. It was an explosion that shook our house. That being said i have stopped using rubber bungs and I know use orange caps with 2 tubes on them that just fit over the carboy.

I have had two fermenter locks try to make orbit inside my closet.

In my opinion:

The plug was dry and well stuck to inside of carboy neck. Also there was not enough room in the fermenter for head to come up. Hops were still left in the primary and clogged the small holes on the fermenter lock. Woooh Laaah....Beergrenade.

Glad noone got hurt, and thanks for post, I didn't know I was putting my family in danger when the two locks shot into the ceiling.

o0weno
Just in case anyone is having 2nd thoughts about this issue, this happened to me last night. I dropped my carboy about a month ago and hadn't brewed anything in it since. A big batch of 5.5 gallons and a heavy fermentation equaled coming home to a ruined carpet. Hooray.

Cleaning carboy, and already had a few while brewing, towel started falling off the countertop (tile) I used the bottom of the carboy to try and catch it...missed it....didn't miss the tile with a good strong bang....checked and put whiteout around a small imperfection so that I can watch it if it gets bigger. Maybe after this post, I'll eat the dang twenty bucks or so and get another one.

ChshreCat said:

Another plus for foam control drops.

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... and 1" tubing for blow off. It's cheap insurance.

cafeviking said:

.....Throw paper airplanes at it before you approach it, as well.

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Wow, what a litmus test! Could you imagine if one of your origami kamikaze's "completed" their mission?

Wow, just got onto this thread! In 11 years of using glass carboys, I've never had this happen. Glad you were unscathed and that your LHBS came through above & beyond! Worst part is, you lost what was most likely a perfectly good brew! A moment of silence for your departed brew.

Closest I ever came was having a rubber stopper & airlock get shot off in the middle of the night. Woke me up from a dead sleep; sounded like a gunshot in my garage! I've begun switching over to Better Bottles, but still use my glass regularly, too.
Good luck on your replacement brew! Let us know how it goes.

I had the same thing happen to a carboy last night. Even with a blow off, the carboy exploded! The ironic thing is that I was looking at a Better Bottle plastic carboy not two days ago, and thought, maybe this would take a lot of "if's" out of the equation...if only I had picked it up, my first mini-mash brew would be in a carboy right now instead of down the drain and in the carpet...urrrrrrrrgh!

Fermcap is your friend.

bja said:

Fermcap is your friend.

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I had one that I used Fermcap in and it didn't help. I was lucky though. I just happened to go into the room where my carboy was and noticed that in the past 1/2 hour, my beer went from a normal krausen to erupting foam. I pulled out the airlock and was pleasantly rewarded with a massive spray of foam. The foam had completely plugged up the airlock. I imagine another few moments and either my airlock would be in my attic right now or I'd still be cleaning the spare room.

Just finding this thread now also, and not to sound like a downer but... pics or it didn't happen. That does not sound even possible, let alone no mention in the OP of how much of a HUGE disaster the beer itself caused? You must have taken a pic or two?

EDIT: Post is half joking... a pic would really be so awesome

Wow... Good thing you didn't get hurt. I would like to see the Mythbusters do a exploding carboy show.

BigB said:

I had one that I used Fermcap in and it didn't help. I was lucky though. I just happened to go into the room where my carboy was and noticed that in the past 1/2 hour, my beer went from a normal krausen to erupting foam. I pulled out the airlock and was pleasantly rewarded with a massive spray of foam. The foam had completely plugged up the airlock. I imagine another few moments and either my airlock would be in my attic right now or I'd still be cleaning the spare room.

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I still haven't learned. Had a slow Belgian start, after airlock clogged I put on the blow off together (one airlock almost in orbit). Three days later I moved to secondaries. Did not know that I still had krausen, because of hops covering inside of Primary. I didn't fill the secondaries all the way up, figured action is low...back go the locks. Shooting at the range with my nine year old, an hour later (I must have stirred yeast up) I get the message, "Something is going on with your beer." Get home blow off hooked back up to secondaries. Locks almost blew off again! Clogs very easy, seems like every time the krausen gets up there.

As a first time brewer with a glass carboy should I be worried?

Not at all, I use glass all the time. For primary fermentation I ALWAYS use a 1/2" dia. blow off tube from the air lock to a recycled gallon jug 1/2 full of water. This ensures that I don't get a stuck air lock negating the pressure building up in the carboy. Under enough pressure glass or plastic will break.