Blow off tube?

[smbuckley]

I just made my first batch of beer and i made my own blow off tube coming out of my fermentar and going into a bucket of sanitized water. The tube is producing about 5 bubbles per second in the water. It has been in the fermentar for about 14 hours, is this normal? There also seems to be a lot of krausen forming at the top, is this good or bad?

 

[Hammy71]

Normal and good. No worries.

 

[smbuckley]

Also I've read that some people switch the blow off tube with an airlock. Is this necessary and if so when should i do it?

 

[boscobeans]

Krausen will form and go through a several changes over the next 5 days or so. It will eventually die down and begin falling to the bottom. It will sink and join with any break materials and other gunk in the trub to eventually compact down to a layer on the bottom.

Gas will continue to be formed throughout the entire procedure and towards the end, it might bring chunks of trub for a ride up and down in the fermenter.

After the gas from alcohol formation is done there will still be gas in the beer and it will continue to come to the top or a period of time as your beer is conditioning in the fermenter.

Just keep it cool, covered and let it do its job. There's no need start looking at specific gravity for at least a week or more..


bosco

 

[unionrdr]

When initial fermentation causes bubbling to slow down or stop,you can switch to a sanitized airlock for the remainder of fermentation. That way,the gunk in the blow off tube doesn't get a chance to dry & become a pita to get out.

 

[blakelyc]

I swap blowoffs for air locks (in a sanitary fashion) after initial fermentation if there is gunk in the blowoff, because otherwise it'll dry and be a cleaning pain. If there no gunk I usually leave the blowoff until moving to secondary or some other process like taking a gravity sample necessitates removing it.