First 5 Gal Batch - Explosion!

[BRGriffith]

Hello All!

I'm brand new to this forum and also a novice home brewer. So first of all, thanks to everyone here sharing their knowledge and experience! This is a great forum. Now that I've said that, on to the problem.

Saturday evening I put together my first 5 gallon bucket batch of my personal favorite red wine from my 1 gallon experiments. Specific gravity was 1.105 with Pasteur Red yeast. I stirred everything up and placed the lid and airlock on tight. Fermentation began as expected mid Sunday with nice, consistent bubbling.

But all good things can't last. This morning at 5 AM I heard a very loud bang from my kitchen and came to find that the lid had been blown off my bucket, making a huge mess. So I sanitized everything and made sure to stir very well to try and keep the bubbles down, then lightly refitted the airlock. My plan is to have the airlock blow off, if anything, rather than the lid.

So my question is this: Is it going to be okay? Also, I'm at work now, so if this happens while I'm not home, will it be okay until I get back around 5?

Thank you all for reading,

Cheers.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

Congrats on an active fermentation

It's probably fine. Obviously there was CO2 being given off so that likely blew off any unwanted airborne nasties. If you expect the problem to keep going you might want to look into rigging up a blow off tube, which can deal with an active fermentation like this one a lot better than an airlock. When things slow down, switch back to an airlock.

Hope that helps!

 

[BRGriffith]

Thanks for the advice. In that case I'm not quite so worried. I'll see what happens and hopefully I can get some great wine and some experience from this!