Fizzing up!! Should I transfer?

TLDR: Should I transfer to a larger fermenter if foam is pushing up thorugh my airlock?

Yesterday I brewed up five gallons(ish) of Belgian style juniper wheat! Everything went great, the Wyeast packet was fully puffed up, I pitched it all into my 6 gal. glass carboy and put in the freezer at 65F.

Right before pitching the yeast, I had to dump a bit of the wort back out because I didn't feel like I had left enough headspace.

This turned out to be correct. And apparently I didn't dump enough - when I got home from work today, 24 hours later, I popped open my freezer to find my brew fizzing up through the (three-piece) airlock, dribbling down the side of the fermenter and puddling ever so slightly around the bottom.

Two questions about this:

1) There are little darker (brown) flecks in the foam that is bubbling from the top of the airlock. Is that the yeast? If so, should I be concerned that I am losing too much yeast through the airlock this way?

Which leads to...

2) Should I transfer my brew into a larger bucket to accommodate the fizzup? I'm hesitant because I don't know how long the fizzup will persist, and I don't want to somehow traumatize the yeast so early in the fermentation, or if that is even a possibility. On the other hand, if I am losing anything valuable through the top of my airlock, is it too soon to correct?

Any advice would be appreciated, as I'm sure everybody has done this at least once. I'm also considering the possibility that this might just be something that happens sometimes, and I don't actually have a problem at all.

No don't move it, clean and sanitize around the airlock hole and hook up a blowoff tube until the fermentation (krausen) subsides, then fit your airlock back in place and wait for the yeast to finish.

Great! Hadn't though of that. I was prepared to just deal with the mess later.

Unless you don't put a blow off tube on any Belgian or wheat yeast, you will have a problem..lost beer. Some yeast strains are very aggressive. Now is NOT the time to transfer anything except airlock to a blow off tube

Thanks for the quick replies! I sort of intuited that it's probably better to just leave it, but I would like to know a little more about the science of it.

What would happen (or could happen) if I did move it? Why should this be avoided?

Ok, the before:



And here's the after:




Think I should be good with this? See anything else I need to fix?

DevilNuts said:

Think I should be good with this? See anything else I need to fix?

Click to expand...

Yeah, on your next batch, leave more head space in the fermenter. That looks like 5 gallons of beer in a 5 gallon carboy, you need to allow more space than that for krausen either by using a larger fermenter or less beer in it.

It was supposed to be five gallons of beer in a six gallon carboy, but I got a little carried away.

EDIT: Hah! I definitely used the wrong carboy! That is totally the 5 gal.

Doh! "Well there's yer problem..."