Is it gonna blow??

[macanudojohn]

So I am working on my second batch, successful boil on Sunday, now the airlock is full of wort and the lid looks like its going to blow off the top...what should I do to salvage it?!

 

[Hopper450]

I would remove the airlock (carefully), cover it with some foil while I clean my airlock and then replace it, or if you still have a very active fermentation, replace it with a blow off tube. I had one blow in my fermentation fridge and that was not fun to clean up!

 

[daksin]

You need to rig a blowoff tube- a piece of tubing connected to the fermentor or the airlock which leads into a bottle of sanitizer. Do a quick search for blowoff tube if you're having trouble imagining it.

 

[Seven]

Put a blow off tube on there.

 

[ghank15]

Same thing happened to me with one of my first brews. I didn't think about krausen. I brewed a 5 gallon batch and fermented in a 5 gallon fermenter. (Needless to say, I bought a bigger fermenter)

Being that I'm not very handy and I didn't really feel like building an actual blow-off tube, I just put my racking cane in the hole of the airlock stopper, rigged a hose and put it in a bucket. it worked pretty well, and I didn't have any explosion.

 

[HerbieHowells]

Being that I'm not very handy and I didn't really feel like building an actual blow-off tube, I just put my racking cane in the hole of the airlock stopper, rigged a hose and put it in a bucket. it worked pretty well, and I didn't have any explosion.

What part of that is "not very handy?" MacGyver himself would be pretty impressed with that rig.

 

[macanudojohn]

I used the tubing that came with the kit for the autosiphon/bottling bucket, and put it into a gallon of water (1/2 filled with a water and star san solution) and it is bubbling away. The airlock got clogged at some point between when I left for work and returned. Only got a little krausen on me and the workbench!

My first batch was an IPA, this is an English Stong Ale with an OG of 1.77, so I guess it needed a bit more room than the IPA did!! Crisis averted, thanks for the quick responses!!

Love the forum!

 

[ghank15]

What part of that is "not very handy?" MacGyver himself would be pretty impressed with that rig.

Why thank you. I meant that I suck at building things. At first I was afraid the narrowness of the racking cane would be a problem, but it was fine.