Foam Everywhere....HELP!

Brewing a brown ale. Added Wyeast 1056. Came home yesterday to foam coming out of the airlock. The piston in the airlock was firing like an engine rod. Any suggestions?

 

Replace the airlock with a blowoff tube.

 

replace the airlock with a piece of tubing that ends in a bucket of water.

 

Captain Obvious, here. What about switching to a plug and blowout tube.

Were you expecting this much activity?

 

My first batch a couple of months ago was an IPA that was pushing the krausen into the airlock. It was a very aggressive fermentation and I had to clean the airlock the next morning after brewing. I received a frantic call from my wife at work that evening and the lid blew off of my ale pale showering our entire laundry room with krausen and hop residue. She was not happy! The thick layer of krausen protected the beer and the batch utlimately turned out great.

For my second and third batches, I popped out the rubber grommit for the airlock and enlarged the hole to 1". I then went to the HBS and got a spiggot and gasket (the same one used on the ale pail) and 1/2" OD tubing to create a blow off tube. Worked like a charm. Just run the tubing into a bucket of sanitized water and the chances of getting a clogged airlock with that diameter of tubing is slim to none. I like this assembly, because everything can be disassembled and sanitized very easily between batches. Good Luck!

 

I wasn't expecting this much activity. I think it may be due to the addition of the brown sugar

 

It could be a number of things that caused this. One being the brown sugar addition. I think the most common cause would be that the fermentation started when the wort was still too warm. Warm wort is like steroids to yeast.