First Brew now in Fermentor

[Flipper]

Well I did my first brew last night and woke up to find a fury of activity in the fermenter. I am a little nervous as I don't want the airlock to get clogged thus causing a blow off. Will it harm anything if i take the air lock out occasionally to clean it? Or should I even worry about it?

 

[kriso77]

I wouldn't continuously remove the airlock. Why take the risk? I would just replace the airlock with a blowoff tube in the stopper and leave it alone until its ready to go into the primary. Just be sure to put the blowoff tube in a glass of sanitized water.

 

[malkore]

bucket or carboy? bucket's usually don't fill up with enough krausen to matter.

a carboy, you'll probably want a blow off tube attached.

 

[Flipper]

bucket or carboy? bucket's usually don't fill up with enough krausen to matter.

a carboy, you'll probably want a blow off tube attached.

It's A bucket. Like I said I am a bit concerned as the lid is already bowed (Should I be Worried?). How do you rig a blow off tube? I have tubing, but i am sure its too big for the stopper.

 

[Danek]

How much free space is there in your bucket? If it's filled right up to the top then you might have problems, but if there's a little space at the top then I wouldn't worry about blow-offs. Those seem to occur more with carboys, which have much smaller headspace than buckets. The lid of my brewing bucket is, like yours, slightly bowed, but that's just gas - it's a 25 liter bucket that only has 21 liters of beer in it, so whilst it's pretty lively, it's not a blow-off risk.

 

[Flipper]

Cool!..........Just to ease my worries, I went ahead and attached some 5/8 tubing to the stopper and put the other end in some sanitized water. I feel better now, man it's really going to town.