Can anybody figure this one out?

Some of you commented on my "first brewday" thread. I'm the guy who had to cover the pot with tin foil to get it to boil. Anyway, I've had this carboy sitting in my room since Monday night (technically very early Tuesday morning). No bubblies, no change in the appearance of the stuff. By now it's almost three days old, and I figured the yeast didn't make it (a friend of mine has had bad experiences with White Labs yeast shipped from austinhomebrew, but neglected to tell me this until halfway through the boil). Well, some time in the past 3 hours or so, the cap, along with airlock, was blown clear off the carboy and what looks like dried kreuzen is now all over the towel that was covering the carboy. So here are a few questions...did the yeast do that? Is it possible for something like that to happen without yeast activity? I was using one of those orange caps and the airlock they gave me wouldn't fit in the big central hole, so I used the smaller, offset hole, which is presumably meant for blowoff tubes. I didn't rig a blowoff tube because I'm using a 6.5 gallon carboy. Any insight?


Oh, and by the way...I guess the chances of contamination are pretty high now, since I didn't catch this right after it happened. Even so, should I just recap it and see what happens?

If you have krausen, you have fermentation. Kind of odd though, how no activity and then a bunch, might want to post a picture.

I wouldn't assume it's ruined; I had an American Wheat blow but it ended up being a great beer, replace with a blow off tube not an airlock. Not sure why it took so long but I'd say you have fermentation. Let it finish....

lol, looks like you had a bit of a lag time!

it was the yeast, and no...you don't have to worry much about contamination...there's a big healthy co2 cover

Thanks a lot for the info/encouragement, guys. gresc, I took your advice and stuck a blow-off tube on the fermenter, and there is indeed fermentation. I'm getting bubbles every 5 or 6 seconds. I guess I'll just let it take its course and see what happens. It smells really good, I know that much.

Cool; let us know....

sounds like the airlock was not getting any flow, so it popped.

make sure it has holes in the bottom...sometimes they don't get cut out after being moulded at the factory.