Blown lid on fermentation bucket!

I brewed a version of Cheesefoods vanilla cream ale on Saturday night. Fermented in a bucket with a standard airlock. It had activity by Sunday morning, so I was happy. Checked around 5 oclock or so on Sunday and all was still good. I had a fantasy draft Sunday night, so was gone all night. When I checked on it this morning (Monday), I noted a bit of beer in the airlock. So, I grabbed another airlock (santized), and as I was putting it on, I noticed the lid was not locked down, then I saw krauson all off the other side of the bucket, the fermentation popped the lid off. So, the beer was never exposed, but the lid was not locked down for a good number of hours. I cleaned it up and put a fresh sanitized airlock, and it is bubbling away again. What are my odds of infection?

fillyo said:

What are my odds of infection?

Click to expand...

.00000000000000000001%

There is a constant flow of CO2 OUT of the fermenter which would keep anything from getting in. Plus the krausen being blown off would have carried anything that got on it out with it.

Some homebrewers and commercial breweries ferment in open containers (Anchor brewing in San Fran for one) so you can relax!

I'm planning on doing this recipe this weekend and I'm getting ready just to go straight blow off no air lock because I read almost all 50+ pages of that thread and pretty much everyone has a explosive fermentations but what yeast did you use

Once I blew a lid off my bucket. Not like, it cracked a little, like it fired off and hit the ceiling. Beer was great.

The CO2 being created by the fermentation process has more than pushed the air out of the bucket. So long as nothing crawled in...like insects etc and you practice sound cleaning and santization processes, you're chances of infection or oxidation are slim to none.

People have been brewing beer friggin centuries in practically every corner of the planet. And a lot of that beer is/was brewed in open fermenters with nothing special (no filtered air, positive pressure etc...just a large open vat of beer goodness being created).

So don't fret. The worse thing that's gonna happen is that you'll make ... beer...

Fillyo - how warm are you fermenting? what is the recommended range for your yeast? Blowing a lid is a rather vigorous ferment, sometimes attributed to too little head space, sometimes attributed to too warm...

I used Wyeast German Ale Yeast. My temp at racking from boil to fermenting bucket was around 75 degrees, so I put the fermenter in a plastic tub with 1 small bag of ice, so I am not sure how much it dropped, guessing to mid sixties, and my basement runs an ambient temp of 68-70 degrees. The german ale ferments 65-72 degrees.

Also, my yield was about 4.25 gallons, so there seemed to be plenty of room in the fermentation bucket. This is my 10th homebrew batch or so (mostly IPAs), and never had such vigorous fermentation. Sounds like I should be fine!