Almost had a blowout

Seriously.......................I just got back from a night on the town to find my 2nd AG (a wheat) about ready to blow out. The airlock was filled with wort, wort was spilled all over the cover of the bucket, and it was struggling to bubble.

Pulled out the air lock. Refilled it. Replaced it, and its bubbling like I've never seen before (with my extract batches).

I'm rather sauced right now, but I just thought I would share.

A few drunken nights I have come home to that. Its nice to see...and at the same time, its hard to muster the will to do anything in that state.

My last batch I dumped on a yeast cake and I was about half lit, I knew it was gonna take off like crazy I put a blow off tube on it. Sure enough about 2 or 3 hours it went nuts on me. I did not want to have to clean up krausen off of the carpet that night.

just went down to check on it and it was pretty near out of control.

had to rid up a blow off tube with the bottom half of the airlock and my 3/8 tube

damn, this is exciting, but for no particular reason

get the 1" or so tubing that fits the carboy neck perfectly and you can have that on hand for emergency blow-off setups. I use an empty gallon size gatoraide jug of water for it to blow into, and the big fat tube is easy to sanitize and set up quickly when needed.

I always end up staying up late on nights I brew. It's partially the energy I get from brewing and partially because I check on it fifty times in 3 or 4 hours before I can sleep.

I have a oatmeal chocolate stout that I started on Saturday that was going along all nice and content. I came back tonight, after a wee celebration, to see the airlock FILLED with goo. Okay, it looked a lot like chocolate ice cream and smelled pretty good as well; however, I had to clean up a bit around the bucket top, then pull the air lock, clean, and offer up to my brew god that all will go well now. The blessed bucket was pressurized like I couldn't believe. I'm so lucky the beast didn't blow!

Cheers and beers

My funniest Krauesen story is my 3rd AG. Brewed an imperial stout in a new pot and hadn't measured the volume right......thought my final volume was closer to 5 gallons when I finished the boil, but when I chilled and transfered to the fermenter, I found it was around 6 gallons. At first I was worried that I'd miss my OG.....but luckily I got a great effeciency, so it was right where I wanted. Unfortunately there wasn't much space so I knew I'd better put a blow off tube (especially with a high gravity). The next afternoon the bucket came to life. Soon there was some krauesen going through the tube, but the top was swelling. It would pop from the pressure. Noticing that the airlock I had actually reduced the pressure more, I thought I'd try sticking that on and putting the bucket in the sink for overflow. 6 o'clock in the morning I hear a loud explosion while in bed. Rush down to my kitchen sink to see that the lid had blown straight off and bits of beer had been flung all the way up to the ceiling. All of that morning was then spent cleaning up and trying to devise a good system for collecting all the krauesen. After a little bit of tinkering, I found a larger tube would fit the entire hole of the fermenter, and had the krauesen blow off to a sanitized, covered vessel so that I see how much beer I could collect. Actually was pretty amazed how much blow off settled back to beer.

But I notice it's hard to sponge out beer stains completely from 10 Ft ceilings! Who knew this hobby was so expensive. Whenever I need to sell my house, I'm going to have to repaint the ceilings now!

Glad you caught it in time, I still need to paint my ceiling to cover the stains from my latest blowup. It's not that funny when it actually happens, I mean that's alcohol abuse, (not being used for its intended purpose).

SWMBO made me scrub the doors and walls this weekend. This was the second time I had to do it.

I've been lucky, I caught my first blowoff and rigged a tube before anything nasty happened...I need to take a pic of my "Brewery" (the living room closet of my loft) if I ever have the kind of "pain your ceiling" blowoff that some people have had...I'll be in a lot of trouble. I only have 2 closets and no other storage in my place...so everything is in the closet...including all my coats...It would be quite a mess...

Just decided to check my ferment room. I recently installed an air conditioner to try to get my temperature down to 68F. I haven't really been getting the vigorous blowoffs that I am use to now.

I use a slightly modded airlock and 1 gallon jug;


I got to start using my hydrometer as well. I usually let my beer primary for 3 weeks...you figure it's probably fermented out by then

Cheers
BeerCanuck