Beer Geyser! Not as good as it sounds

[Vercingetorix]

Hello,

So I cooked up the first batch last night. Just under 5 gallons in a 5 gallon glass carboy. I realized that I had reason for concern and decided to replace the fermentation lock with a blowoff hose today. I bought the necessary plastic tubing and removed the rubber cork from the carboy. What a terrible idea!

Beer, yeast, hops, etc. soon churned out of the carboy and about 4 feet up onto the wall. I think I lost a quart or two of material from the carboy before getting everything back together.

Do you think this jeopardizes the quality of the entire batch? Does it mean something else is wrong, or was I just an idiot to ever mess with the cork?

 

[ArtVandelay]

The only thing that might be "wrong" is using too small of a carboy for a 5 gallon batch. Most use a minimum 6 gallon carboy or bucket for primary to have adequate headspace to prevent huge blow offs like you experience.

 

[kryolla]

you had it plug with no airlock so when you took off the cork it just exploded? Am I understanding this correctly. Unless the airlock got clogged and once you took it off it just exploded

 

[Vercingetorix]

I had a normal airlock at first, and tried to put in a blowoff hose. I guess enough pressure had built up in there that it kind of exploded.

So I'm just not sure if I should be worried about the quality of the batch now, or if I did something wrong in the first place for there to be that much pressure, or what.

 

[Swooded]

The stout I have going right now was the same way at the beginning, because I put it in a 5.5 gal better bottle. I just had a blow off tube connected from the get go so I wouldn't run into any problems. At it's most active it was bubbling non-stop & occasionally pushing krausen all the way through the blow off tube. The main reason to use bigger buckets or carboys for their primary is to avoid this exact situation.
The pressure you had is likely because of the size of your carboy & because you had an "active" batch. I don't think you have anything to worry about based on that fact alone.

 

[mkory]

Your batch is fine, just remember to leave yourself more head space in the future! I suggest you get a larger fermenter, then a larger kettle, then another larger fermenter... so on and so forth.

 

[Vercingetorix]

haha I think you're on to something there.

Thanks for the reassurance.

 

[Beer-Baron]

I've never had something like this happen to me, but I've read about it many times so I've always used a blow off for the first week in the primary and once fermentation slows down I put on an air-lock

 

[drac0]

Years ago, I had a made a Guava Melomel (mead).

The fermentation was absolutely the most violent one I've seen, it was spraying krausen out through the airlock by the next morning and bucket lid looked like it was about to pop off. Hoping to prevent a mess, I put the fermenting bucket in the sink and placed a cereal bowl over the top of the airlock, duck taped down the lid read good and was off to work.

When I came home, the bowl was on the other side of the kitchen, the tape was ripped and the lid blown off, I had krausen on the ceiling! Let me tell you, it's not easy to clean off of a pop corn textured ceiling!

What had happened, I forgot to weigh down the fruit bag. During the fermentation, CO2 made it raise out of the must and it got pushed up against the airlock hole.

Lesson learned: Make sure your primary fermentor is large enough to allow head space for your brew and make sure to weigh down your fruit bag!

 

[xxsn0blindxx]

This happened to me on a porter. At 8PM the night of brewing it was bubbling the airlock like crazy the next morning I checked it and the airlock must have gotten plugged and it blew the top off along with kreusen all over the place. I sterilized the top and airlock and then added a blow off tube to the second port on the topper. The batch turned out fine, no infection. Since then I have made sure to have a blow off tube hooked up as a backup to the airlock. Don't sweat it your brew is most likely fine.