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Craziest fermentation

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Jag75

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Just did a kolsch on Saturday. Sunday morning this thing was rocking like something fierce. When I bought the carboys I didnt think about headspace for brewing 5 gallon batches. I dont use carboys a lot but when I do I dont fill up all the way . Learned that after my first time. This beer is nuts because I have taken some out on Sunday and now this morning when I got up had to do the same thing . I've used Nottingham yeast before and had good results but this batch ain't no joke . What's your most aggressive fermentation you've had ?
 
About 12 years ago I made a coffee stout and pitched it right on top of the yeast cake of a porter that was just moving to secondary. I mean it went right into the bucket that the porter just came out of. Then I oxygenated it thoroughly.

The bucket was a standard bucket fermenter with the REALLY tight-fitting lids.
Airlock in place, I left it on my kitchen counter and went to bed.

In the middle of the night, I was shaken awake by the sound of an explosion followed by the sound of a circular object doing the spinning until it settles flat like when you spin a coin. I recognized the sound as a bucket lid settling on tile.

I rush to the kitchen and there is my bucket lid on the floor, bucket still on the counter, and dark stout beer foam all over the cabinets and worst of all: on the popcorn ceiling 4 feet above the bucket.

Needless to say it was a restless night, since I spent the better part of the next hour wiping beer foam off of everything before it dried.

I guess the airlock had gotten so clogged with foam and the pressure built so fast that the only option was to blow the lid off (and by the time it blew off, it must have been under an unreal amount of pressure). To this day I don't know why the airlock didn't blow out first.
 
I was doing a zombie dust clone with S-04 yeast and it blew off my bung and made a big mess in my ferm chamber. That day I learned the value of blowoff tubes. Beer turned out good though.
 
Saf-Brew S-33... rehydrated and pitched on a Friday night leaving about 0.75gl of headspace in a 3gl fermenter thinking I'd be fine... I should've known what was coming, within about an hour I had airlock activity! At around 3am the dog starts barking so I head downstairs... its literally pulsing beer out of the airlock... if the cap wasn't on the top of my airlock it would have been a small fountain... crazy! In my PJs, I had to rig a blowoff tube from whatever equipment I had lying around.. and that yeast was pumping insane amounts of CO2 out!
I think I lost about half a gallon of beer that night... luckily the dog was too afraid of all the commotion to go and lap it up as it spurted out!
 
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