dry hop explosion?!?

So I looked this up and apparently I'm not the only person this has happened to but I just felt the need to share my messy experience.

From what I gather through browsing the forums this is kind of what happened. A bunch of CO2 was trapped in my beer and when I added two ounces of dry hops it formed a nucleation site in which the CO2 escaped in the form of foaming bubbles shooting out of the top of my carboy with all my dry hops. It was a huge mess and this has never happened before.

So I'm struggling to figure out how to attach stuff on here but here is a link to my personal blog with a pic and a video if you're interested:

http://inhousebrew.weebly.com/1/post/2012/08/dry-hopping-volcano.html

Might be worth giving the carboy a swirl before adding hops. Should help purge some of that cO2. That must have been a lot of CO2. How much headspace did you have in your carboy?

It's been sitting in the secondary for a few weeks and it is at a stable 1.007.
That said there was almost no headspace. I actually needed to draw out some of the beer with the wine thief just to make room for the hops. No an hour or more later it has finally died down and I might take off the blowoff tube.

Dude that's crazy, nasty!

duboman said:

Dude that's crazy, nasty!

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I know right? I've got hop crusties all over my basement.

Any chance your airlock was clogged or something? I could see that causing excess CO2 to build up in the carboy.

I think from now on I'm gonna wack the side of my carboy before I add hops.

yeah, I don't think it was the airlock. it bubbled just fine during primary and I'm not sure why/how the airlock would have clogged on the secondary.

I don't know, it was weird and in six years this is the first time anything like this has happened. I guess just make sure there is enough headspace to make sure

I had that happen to me but maybe not to that extent. I tried to squeeze in as much as I could in a full carboy (as you say you did) and I pretty much boiled it down to the pellet hops expanding after soaking in liquid and just not enough real estate. They had to go somewhere, so the floor it went.

unionrdr said:

Yup,that's what blow off's are for. I start every brew with one just to keep momma happy. Not to mention my old joints bendin over cleanin...

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Yeah, except this wasn't at the start. This was a month post-fermentation that this happened. I mean, I tossed the blowoff on eventually but didn't have time right away. This literally happened in 45 seconds of adding dry hops.

Look on the bright side: your basement will smell awesome for weeks.

My mantra: for the average 5 gallon batch, use carboys/secondaries that are around a 7.5 gallon capacity. Had mine for 2-3 years, never had a blowout. The extra headspace allows for some tremendous buildup without the risk of a volcano like you experienced.