2 fermenters and 1 airlock...trouble?

[bighandsray]

Made my second AG 10 gallon batch sunday. A Blonde ale. I realized when I was sanitizing my fermenters that I only had 1 airlock. LHBS was closed so I rigged up a 2 fer 1. I ran 8" of tubing from each fermenter into a plastic "T" barb. Off the other end of the barb comes 1"of tubing then onto the airlock. Any harm to this method?

 

[sundowner]

I don't know man, I would have just stuck some aluminum foil on one of 'em.

 

[weirdboy]

Are they using the same yeast? Seems like you could get some crossover there if you get a strong kreusen.

I, too would just use aluminum foil.

 

[RogerMcAllen]

Instead of going to the T, just put one of the tubes into a bottle of water.

 

[pericles]

Short answer: no, I think it's a great work around!

Long answer: unless I've visualized your setup wrong, you're going to get air exchange from one fermenter to the other. If you're using the same batch, (and especially yeast) in each vessel, that that's not such a big deal, unless there's a sanitation problem in one and NOT the other. . . in that case, the infection will spread to both. Ultimately, I think you'll probably have a longer fermentation time this way, but that's more intuition than science, and definitely doesn't come from experience. Maybe it's because I feel like this setup is going to be lightly pressurized, and I associate that with carbonation and conditioning instead of primary fermenting?

An alternative (for future planning disasters) would be to take the tubing and run it from the fermenter down into a glass of water.

-Jack

 

[dsmith1279]

Instead of going to the T, just put one of the tubes into a bottle of water.

Yep, go old school with a blow off tube!

 

[ChshreCat]

Speaking of blow off, if these are two different beers I'd worry about one of them blowing off into the other.

 

[Baldy_Beer_Brewery]

10 gallons of blonde ale. Same beer boys.

I would have used foil on both of them.

 

[MacBruver]

Well I woulda used a blowoff on both. There's no telling how vigorous the fermentation is going to get, and that "tee" setup could be more prone to clogging with two separate fermenters feeding into it. I guess just keep a close eye on both.

 

[bighandsray]

Thanks for everyone's input. Fermentation of both seems to be rolling along. I am using 7 gallon water containers from wal-mart ($10). There is no blow off or krausen. I never get any, I always use ferm cap in the boil so I guess this is why. I am using two different yeasts, White Labs London Ale and US-05.
I thought about the blow off tube method but this thing looks way cooler. I will try to get some pics soon (I am an image upload idiot).