Beginner Oopsie...

[vbkid]

So I've made Apfelwein in the past easily enough, and decided to try my hand at something only slightly more complicated.
On Friday, I prepared 5 gallons of mocha coffe wine per the 2nd recipe seen here: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request110.asp
I followed everything exactly besides not adding in the tannin yet, and left for the weekend.
I just came back to see it had overflowed with a coffee froth. The airlock was full of it and the carboy was covered. After fitting a new, clean airlock and wiping everything down, it seems to not have lost much liquid at all, is fermenting vigorously (at least 1 bubble a second), and smells fine still.
So my questions are, what did I do wrong, how do I prevent what happened, and do I need to do anything special with the wine currently?
Thanks for the help,
I really do plan on branching out in my winemakign and contributing to this forum!
Kyle

 

[TexasWine]

So I've made Apfelwein in the past easily enough, and decided to try my hand at something only slightly more complicated.
On Friday, I prepared 5 gallons of mocha coffe wine per the 2nd recipe seen here: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request110.asp
I followed everything exactly besides not adding in the tannin yet, and left for the weekend.
I just came back to see it had overflowed with a coffee froth. The airlock was full of it and the carboy was covered. After fitting a new, clean airlock and wiping everything down, it seems to not have lost much liquid at all, is fermenting vigorously (at least 1 bubble a second), and smells fine still.
So my questions are, what did I do wrong, how do I prevent what happened, and do I need to do anything special with the wine currently?
Thanks for the help,
I really do plan on branching out in my winemakign and contributing to this forum!
Kyle

Hey Kyle. Welcome to the forum. In general terms, you simply didn't have enough head space in whatever container you were using to ferment. Because you have a history with apfelwein I'm guessing you put 5 gallons of must in a 5 gallon carboy. You can get by with that setup with apfelwein using Montrachet because there's little to no foaming. But a lot of wine recipes create a significant amount of foam and it sounds like this is one of them.

So to remedy it, find a bigger carboy (like 6 gallons) or use a 7-8 gallon fermentation bucket.

And just keep going on the wine. Sounds like you did everything you should have done.

 

[vbkid]

So a quick update. After around 6 days, it is still bubbling away furiously and churning quite a bit inside. One thing I noticied in the churning, is a fairly large amount of small white globs in the wine itself. Is this normal or is it something bad? Anything I need to do?
Thanks for all the help,
Kyle

 

[Sammyk]

We ferment in a pail. 6 gallon pail that actually holds 7.8 gallons. Never had one over flow.
To avoid a mess, set a larger container under the carboy to catch the over flow. Saves a lot of clean up and cussing!

 

[vbkid]

Appreciate the advice, currently just worried about the small white globules churring in the batch!

 

[texcan2000]

No worries, it's just yeast, proteins etc rising and falling with the active fermentation. It should all drop to the bottom as fermentation completes.

 

[Honda88]

its just foam created by the fermentation, it is normal don't freak out.

 

[vbkid]

Thanks for the help!
Seeing as this one seems to be going OK, I plan on starting a few gallon batches of strawberry wine this weekend!