Decision to rig up a blow off tube

[RMBrewer14]

My IPA has been vigorously fermenting since being placed in the car boy on Saturday night, but this morning quite a bit had seeped out and krausen was filling the airlock. I had to leave for work and be gone all day so I figured the safest thing to do was to rig up a blow off tube. I'm here just to make sure I did it right. I was using a 3 piece airlock so I removed the cap and thimble looking piece and placed a tube on that went into a pitcher with water about 1/3 of the way up. I made sure the tube was off the bottom of the pitcher. See pics below.

Questions are:
1. Does the water in the pitcher need sanitizing solution in it?
2. Does the pitcher need a lid?

 

[Newsman]

It wouldn't be a bad idea to mix in some sanitizer with the blowoff water, but I don't think it's mandatory. What I do is I just take the airlock off entirely and jam the blowoff tube down in the stopper. OTOH, I use a "universal" bung so there's a lot less chance of it falling into the carboy.

 

[beergolf]

I usually put some sanitizer in the blow off pitcher. No the pitcher does not need a lid. There is no need to elevate the pitcher on a block like you did. It is better to keep it as low as possible..

Another tip is to remove the little X that is on the end of the airlock. It just makes it so the airlock does not get clogged.

 

[Bensiff]

Clever...never see someone rig a blow off like that. To answer your questions:

1 - no
2 - no

Obviously there are also circumstances where the answer is not a no. If you want to collect the blow off in a homebrewer form of krausening then you want everything to be sanitary and covered. If you are are going to drop the temp on the rig to do something like lager while the blow off is still attached you can suck some water up the tube so you wouldn't want nasty water getting pulled into your carboy.

 

[homebrewmike]

Looks good. I've mostly used growlers as my blow off containers with a sanitized solution in there. I also have a "blow off" stopper that I use when needed to avoid the small openings that most airlocks have towards the bottom.

 

[RMBrewer14]

This is great. Thanks for the help so quickly. Having reassurance works wonders. I've moved the pitcher off the cinder block to lower it. Thanks for the tip, beergolf.

Also, I'm using the FermWrap to regulate temp so I should deal with any suck back due to a sudden drop.

Thanks again!

 

[kombat]

I'd put more water in that pitcher. There's really no risk of having too much, but the end of your blowoff tube looks perilously close to the surface, in my opinion. You want to make sure it stays submerged. I'd fill that pitcher up to at least the halfway mark, probably 3/5ths.

And clean that yeast off the floor and the outside of your carboy before it hardens on and becomes a huge PITA to scrape off.