First time using a glass primary

[Mishka]

As the title suggests I've always used a plastic bucket to ferment but recently had to go to glass since the bucket got badly contaminated. I love watching the beer ferment Anyway just two questions:
1. The blow off tube is going into a jar that had star-stan solution in it from the brew-day. Last night the krausen (sp?) was kinda high but not coming out of the fermentor, but this morning I noticed little bits of foam in the tube and the sanitizing solution is now super-murky with no foaming bubbles. Would it be ok to replace the star-stan jar with more sanitizing solution as long as the tube remains submerged?

2. Do I rack to secondary when krausen completely falls and there is no foam above the beer anymore or do I wait a day after this happens?

Thanks a lot

 

[Lou]

you can replace the liquid in your blow-off reservoir without worry...at high krausen, theres so much CO2 coming out of that tube that you shouldn't have any fears of critters sneaking in...

rack to secondary when you normally would....about 7-10 days...after krausen falls...airlock activity is <=1 BPM...

 

[davidkrau]

I use a 61/2 gal corboy with 5 gal fermenting brew in it and all I've ever used is an airlock. and I've never had any problems. What size corboy are you using? I don't wait as long as some people to transfer to a secondary. When I don't see any activity in the primary for a day or two I transfer to a secondary. In fact a lot of brewers do not bother with a secondary at all and transfer directly to a bottling bucket, add corn sugar and bottle.

 

[BrewUO]

I use a 61/2 gal corboy with 5 gal fermenting brew in it and all I've ever used is an airlock. and I've never had any problems

Thats what we (my brew partner and I) use thinking the same thing. All was fine until about the 3rd day, foam up into the airlock. Got kinda sketchy but we were able to get the blow-off tube in just fine.

The beer is now in secondary and tasting very good.