Blowoff Insanity!

[Keiff]

Good evening all!

I'm kind of in a bad spot. I brewed a 5.5 gallon batch of partial grain blonde ale last night (my second, with only 3 previous batches under my belt) and put it into a 6 gallon fermenter. The only thing I did differently was aerate the hell out of the wort and used a Wyeast smack pack (1056). 12 hours later and I am now battling a constant onslaught of foam! My house is at 70° and the fermenter is at 73°

I only have a drilled stopper and some 1/2" tubing to serve as a blowoff. I don't have access to fermcap at the moment and all brewery supply shops are closed. There is so much foam that it is condensing in the tube, along with hop bits at a rapid rate. The tubing isn't adequate because I pulled the stopper and got blasted by krausen crud. A pillar of foam spews forth at a good speed.

What can I do in a pinch? In certainly don't want a glass explosion in the middle of the night and I'm starting to get a little worried that it may be taking a toll on my yeast count.

This fermentation is just insane!

Edit: I cut the length of the tubing to give it a straight shot to the saniting cup to fight the condensation. Should I worry about yeast loss? I assume there are plenty since the inside of the carboy looks like a rolling boil.

 

[olotti]

Do u have a plastic tub to make a swamp cooler out of? If u do just fill it a little with cool water and set ur carboy in that. It'll cool down the temps and slow the fermentation but with that temp and blowoff it may b getting close to finished anyway but it'll b better to cool it if u can just for piece of mind.

 

[1977Brewer]

If you have a tub you can make a swamp cooler in a pinch. It's way too warm. Cooling should calm it down.

 

[olotti]

Also another idea is get a couple towels and soak with cold water, wrong them out so their damp but not dripping, then wrap those around the carboy and have a small fan blowing on them to sort of circulate or help cool even faster. This works too had to do it on a big ris that was blowing off like crazy and it helped bring the temps down enough. You just have to recheck and re wet the towels to maintain the temp u want.

 

[Keiff]

Thanks for the suggestions folks. Unfortunately, I'm in Houston. Swamp coolers don't really work too well with humidity above 70%. I did drop it into my bottling bucket filled with cold tap water. Hopefully that will slow things down a tad. The yeast's stated temp range is 60-72°.

 

[andrewmaixner]

Emergency temperature exceedance procedure: Spray a frozen 0.5L water bottle (label removed, washed) with starsan. Drop directly in fermenter untill temp comes down.
Ultra-emergency procedure: non-chlorinated ice, if your yeast has already taken over, and you need the temp controlled instantly.
Then use a chilled water bath next time, or asap, with the ice bottles on the outside.



I know that some brewers keep pre-boiled sanitary ice on hand to chill wort fast in partial-boil setups also.

 

[olotti]

Thanks for the suggestions folks. Unfortunately, I'm in Houston. Swamp coolers don't really work too well with humidity above 70%. I did drop it into my bottling bucket filled with cold tap water. Hopefully that will slow things down a tad. The yeast's stated temp range is 60-72°.

It will just give it time to adjust. Your just over the ideal range so what you've done should work. Even if it just gets it to 68-70 deg. Youll have to keep replacing the water to keep it in that range so just keep an eye on it.