Blow-off valve

[Beerisnom]

So, for the last year I've been making strong IPA's and have been using a blow-off valve to avoid the airlock getting jammed up. This works great, by the way - fixed the problem completely. However, I decided to make some brown ales recently and reflexively just used the blow-off valve instead of the airlock. As far as I can tell, over the last three days there has been no bubbling at all from the bucket of sanitizer the blow-off valve runs through.

So, I'm paranoid that my yeast stalled. I don't want to remove the valve and install the airlock for fear of letting O2 in there. Do you think it's possible that the CO2 emission from the basic brown ale is so low that it's just seeping through the valve without causing the huge bubble-bursts that my IPA's cause? Anyone have a similar experience?

 

[kev211]

What is your blow off tube setup? Are you using one of those orange caps on top of a carboy? A bung? Bubbling is not a good sign of active fermentation. So it sounds like the CO2 is escaping somewhere else. Also, swapping the blowoff tube for a airlock will let it negligible amounts of O2 so I wouldnt be worried about that.

Really the only way to tell that its fermenting is to take a gravity sample.