Airlock Overflow Question

Hi all. I'm pretty new to home brewing, but not new to the beer industry. While letting my third batch of beer ferment (first batch in about five years), looks like it got off to a pretty good start. The following was after just 24 hours:



Slightly freaking out I didn't know what to do so I thought about what I had seen at multiple breweries. I got my siphon hose and attached it the airlock, then got one of the empty one gallon bottles of water, filled it half way and put the other end of the hose in it:



[ame="http://youtu.be/ctU_hEuUrCI"]http://youtu.be/ctU_hEuUrCI[/ame]

Everything looked good then I decided to do some research just to make sure I did it correctly. Well, I read I was suppose to put it sanitizer. Unfortunately I do not have that much so I put about a spoonful or so in the bottle.

Hopefully this will be enough?

Cheers and thank you in advance for your help!

A spoonful of Starsan would be fine. Looks like a 5 gallon batch in a 6 gallon carboy? Def a good thing to rig a blow off!

unionrdr said:

A spoonful of Starsan would be fine. Looks like a 5 gallon batch in a 6 gallon carboy? Def a good thing to rig a blow off!

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phew Glad that just a spoonful would be okay. And it's okay that I did not put the Starsan until like five minutes later?

Yeah five gallon batch in a six gallon carboy.

Thank you for your quick response unionrdr!

+1 with a tablespoon of star-San. Looks good. For the amount of krausen coming through, you shouldn't have any problems because you didn't put the blowoff tube into sanitized liquid.

Just make sure that when the primary fermentation dies down and you replace the airlock, sanitize it first, and refill it with star San or vodka.

If your tube gets clogged then just leave it off and let it spew for a while. What I do, using fermcap on my latest batch to try it out since the last 2 batches blew the lids off.

GibbyGibson said:

+1 with a tablespoon of star-San. Looks good. For the amount of krausen coming through, you shouldn't have any problems because you didn't put the blowoff tube into sanitized liquid.

Just make sure that when the primary fermentation dies down and you replace the airlock, sanitize it first, and refill it with star San or vodka.

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Sounds good. Thank you for the additional advice.

How long should I keep it in the blowoff for? Or better question, when will I know when I no longer need the blowoff?

theck said:

If your tube gets clogged then just leave it off and let it spew for a while. What I do, using fermcap on my latest batch to try it out since the last 2 batches blew the lids off.

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Cool thank you for the tip!

I_Brew_Therefore_I_Am said:

Cool thank you for the tip!

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Put it inside a rubbermaid tub too to catch it all too... sometimes that floor can get pretty sticky with all the krausen

I leave the blow off rigged up until it takes a minute or more to even try to make one bubble at the end of the blow off tube. then I sanitize an airlock & spray the airlock grommet with Starsan as well before installing it & filling to the line with cheap vodka.

You are lucky you caught that. I lost 2 gallons of wort in a massive blowout a while back. Had it in a swamp cooler so at least it got caught in something other than the floor, but the hop/yeast mess that landed on the ceiling was a PITA to clean up..lol

I_Brew_Therefore_I_Am said:

Sounds good. Thank you for the additional advice.



How long should I keep it in the blowoff for? Or better question, when will I know when I no longer need the blowoff?

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I rig up a blow off tube from the get go. I I save about 3 glass pitchers/vases/etc of left over sanitizer from brew day and cover them with foil. I use one for the start of fermentation, the second if the first gets nasty, and the third to sanitize/fill my airlock. I replace the blow off tube when fermentation calms down sufficiently. (About a bubble per minute or less).

Thank you everyone for all your advice and feedback.

Just an update, as of about five minutes ago the overflow bottle looked like this:





I know I probably didn't need to but I wanted to get a clean bottle of water/sanitizer. Hopefully that's okay? I will check again tomorrow but as of now it's still overflowing pretty steadily.

It looks as though there is a lot of yeast in the overflow, that's okay too I imagine?

Yeah, you'll get nasties and yeasties in the water. It'll be fine. There is still plenty of yeast in the fermenter. Otherwise you wouldn't be overflowing with krausen. Within the next 12 hrs the krausen will drop off. You don't have a lot of headspace in your carboy so it's going to take a while for it to stop pushing through the tube.

Another question. Are you covering your carboy at all or is it in a dark room where sunlight can't get to it? If not, cover it ASAP. UV light will pass through the glass and ruin the beer.

Just FYI, you should rig that up every time you brew. As soon as the Krausen starts to drop break it down and clean out the tube. Once that stuff gets caked on and dries in the tube its a ***** to get out.

GibbyGibson said:

Another question. Are you covering your carboy at all or is it in a dark room where sunlight can't get to it? If not, cover it ASAP. UV light will pass through the glass and ruin the beer.

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Oh yeah. It's being stored under the house behind a closed and locked door.

RmikeVT said:

Just FYI, you should rig that up every time you brew. As soon as the Krausen starts to drop break it down and clean out the tube. Once that stuff gets caked on and dries in the tube its a ***** to get out.

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Thank you for the advice. Krausen hasn't dropped much.

Looking forward to seeing what it looks like tomorrow morning.