Anyone had a beer ferment so hard it made your nose burn

[abeasst]

I made a 9% IPA last weekend and its been fermenting like a champ thanks to the big starter I made. I went in the garage yesterday and smelled something odd :cross: so I took a deep breathe and my nose started burning. So I walked over to the freezer my beer was fermenting in and opened the lid and got punched in the face by the smell. I proceeded to open the garage doors and let it air out.

Anyone else had this happen?

 

[hanuswalrus]

Oh yeah. It definitely feels like a punch in the face, too. I pulled the airlock out of a still fermenting beer to change out the sanitizer (the krausen was clogging it up) and the second I pulled it out, beer shot straight up like a volcano and made a beautiful brown design on my ceiling. Blow off tubes from that point on.

 

[bacgabe]

In my experience, that is fairly typical of any fermentation in an enclosed space such as a chest freezer. The nose burn comes from co2 that is given off by the fermentation process--If I remember correctly, it converts to carbonic acid in your nose (the same experience you get when you burp out through your nose after drinking a carbonated soda). I do not think there is any need to vent unless it is bothering you.

 

[drgonzo2k2]

Haha, yeah I too learned the hard way on this rite of passage for brewers. For me it was looking at the airlock bubbling away like a machine gun on a new IPA I had brewed, thinking to myself, "I bet that hoppy aroma smells wonderful," and then sticking my nose right up to the airlock to take a big ol whiff. A couple of minutes later after my eyes stopped watering, I stopped coughing, etc., I assumed by beer was ruined, but a quick Google search revealed that everything was A-OK and it was just the CO2 turning into carbonic acid in my capillaries.

 

[m00ps]

Every time I stick my head into my chest freezer fermentation chamber, I forget the entire thing is filled with CO2 from fermentation. You think your nose burned from sniffing an airlock, try immersing your face in a giant vat of CO2...

 

[abeasst]

I was just surprised it filled my entire garage with that much co2.