how does blow-off affect taste of beer?

If there a difference in beer if the blow-off goes out a blow-off tube, versus using a larger fermentation container and letting it settle back into the beer?

What do commercial beers do?

Thanks.

The difference is that a completely sealed fermenter will blow up. This has a terrible effect on the beer.

Oops I didn't mean sealed, I meant the difference between having a bunch of krausen leave the fermenter through a blow-off tube, and having it stay there and go back down because the fermenter is large enough to contain it all.

You'll lose some bitterness to the blowoff. Worse, you'll lose some beer.

I also believe there is a risk (perhaps small at best) that the krausen clogs the blow off tube which leads back to HickoryMike's statement.

You'll lose some bitterness to the blowoff. Worse, you'll lose some beer.

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No, bittering only occurs in the boil.
Yes

Most commercial operations use a blow-off of some sort, unless they are doing open fermentation.

david_42 said:

No, bittering only occurs in the boil.
Yes

Most commercial operations use a blow-off of some sort, unless they are doing open fermentation.

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Hop alpha acids are only isomerized in the boil to become bittering iso-alphas, but it's wrong to assume that you can't lose iso-alphas post-boil. At least, according to Palmer, yeast can force as much as 40% of dissolved iso-alphas to precipitate. According to Daniels, blow-off can result in losses of up to to 15% total iso-alphas.

I think you're confusing "blow-off" with standard airlock offgassing. Fermentation blow-off is the result of fermenting in a vessel that is too small to contain the resulting krausen. It's a fault, not a feature (unless you're Bass Ale, and they recover the beer). I've toured many commercial operations, and I've not yet seen one that seeks to encourage blow-off .