Dumb question on very active fermentation

[Jcoz]

I brewed a Dunkelweizen on Saturday (first batch for me), and fermentation really took off overnight yesterday, when I woke up, my Ale pail looks much like the carboy in the "explosive fermentation" thread in this forum, only my airlock did not come off.

My Dumb question:

To what level do I need to clean this up, and do I need to in some way replace the airlock with another sanitized airlock and clean solution?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Jcoz]

Another dumb question:

I know many advocate long primaries here, however, I wanted to ask if there is any real value to leaving in the primary for conditioning when you brew beers like Weizens or maybe a Wit, where cloudiness is both acceptable and pert of the style itself?

I know I will leave it for 10-14 days regardless, but I'm not going for clarity, so just asking.....

 

[unionrdr]

I'd at least clean & refill the airlock. I use cheap,grocery store vodka in mine,as Gary Martin shows in one of his earlier videos. I even thought of attaching a blow off directly to the riser tube in the center of the airlock to a bucket of star-san or something.

 

[jsweet]

Well, I have a pale ale bottle conditioning right now, and I took a sample from the fermenter at 2 weeks and again at 3 weeks (bottling day). It was somewhat clearer at 3 weeks, but more importantly, it tasted noticeably better. YMMV, and it hasn't bottle conditioned yet, so who knows maybe it will taste like crap after all

Anyway, the extra conditioning time is not just to let the yeast flocculate and the beer to clear, it's also so the yeast can break down more stuff, like the more difficult-to-ferment sugars, the waste products they generated previously, etc.

Of course each individual brewer must decide for themselves when each individual beer has fermented long enough. There are no hard and fast rules. I have a summer wheat beer that I am hoping to rush out of the primary a little on the early side, if the yeast will permit, because I am more concerned about having it ready to drink when it starts getting really hot outside than I am about having this one be the perfect beer. (I have others fermenting now that I would like to be "the perfect beer", this one I'm just hoping to have something thirst quenching for a hot day )

As far as your airlock question... I would probably clean it out and refill it, yeah. If you don't have another airlock that you can have on deck and ready to go, you can put sanitized aluminum foil over the top while you are cleaning the dirty one.

That said, I've got an airlock that had some yeast blow into it, and actually this will be like the third frikkin' time I've cleaned this airlock because I keep thinking it is done blowing off and then it's not. I should have just put the blowoff tube back on it, but what do I know. Anyway, I've just left it there for a couple days and I will probably finally replace it with a fresh one tonight or tomorrow. The main concern, I think, is not so much sanitation, but that it could become clogged and blow your lid/bung off.

If there's enough gunk in there you think it might clog, definitely clean it ASAP. Otherwise, well you should probably clean it anyway, but I don't think there's a rush.

 

[janivar123]

For hefeweisen i think some of the point is that its served young so no need to extend on 10-14 days
If airlock is filled with yeast it may get blocked at some point so clean it or replace with sanitized one

 

[Jcoz]

For hefeweisen i think some of the point is that its served young so no need to extend on 10-14 days
If airlock is filled with yeast it may get blocked at some point so clean it or replace with sanitized one

This is what I was thinking...I'm not sure I'll keep it in the fermenter to condition after its done attenuating.

I'll readily admit that part of the reason is that I have a graduation party for my sister in law I'm going to be at June 18th, was hoping to have some to try by then.

I'm hoping that bottling into 12oz bottles will shorten the time needed in the bottle as well....

 

[Jcoz]

And thanks for the couple responses on the airlock, I have to wait till I get home to completely clean it, but I have another airlock so I'll clean it off, sanitize, and get another on there tonight.

I was using part of my star-san solution from sanitizing the airlock for the liquid in there, so I'll probably just do that again.

The Krausen on this thing is pretty crazy, I had just under 5 gallons in there, in a 6.5gallon Ale pail, thought that would be plenty of room.....guess not, lol.