IHateMayonnaise
Well-Known Member
I brewed a beer Friday night, a Stone Double Bastard all-grain clone from Austin-Homebrew, which ended up having an OG of 1.100 (the recipe called for 1.110), into which I pitched two vials of White Labs California V yeast (no starter). I then siphoned it into a 6.5 gallon carboy and proceeded to wait. I had no activity, absolutely none, until 60 hours after pitching. I nearly made a thread about it because I was worried something was wrong; I've never heard of a beer taking this long to make its first bubble.
So yesterday it started fermenting, whew! Not fast, not slow, at a medium rate. Had a couple inches of yeast cake on the top. So I went to school all day today and just got back, and upon opening the door to my apartment I was immediately overwhelmed by a rather pungent, albeit pleasant, beer odor. "Interesting" I thought. Yes, interesting indeed.
So I peered into my bathroom, aka my resident fermentation chamber, only to see the yeast cake now extended up to the airlock on my carboy with foam coming out the top. This had happened several times before on previous brews, mostly due to insufficient headroom while using buckets.
So, per the usual perscription, I sanitized another airlock, and proceeded to pull the other off and wipe down the carboy. Immediately, the stopper and airlock shot out of my hand and I was covered, drenched, in yeasty sticky hoppy beer. Everything in my damn bathroom was covered, spots even hit the ceiling. My towel, toilet, sink, toothbrush, mirror, everything was dripping. And what's more it kept on foaming, enough to fill a pint glass every three seconds.
The carboy is still foaming, although now it has the bottom part of a two-piece airlock on it. Honestly I don't think there is much point in jamming an airlock on right now, the CO2 production is still through the roof. I mean, I can hear it fermenting in the other room, without a damn airlock!
Lessons that I learned today:
1) When doublepitching a big beer, keep it in the bathtub for 4 or 5 days.
2) Something I thought I had but clearly did not: patience
3) Cleaning up after brewing never ends
I took a video of the foaming action after the incident on my phone, I'll try and post it later. Has this or anything similar ever happened to anyone before? Or am I the only one standing on a chair wiping beer from their ceiling??
Update: Video! This is after the second explosion after I moved the beer to my bathtub, after I stuck a carboy stopper in the carboy (no airlock), and shot off a few minutes later
Up close of the foaming action:
So yesterday it started fermenting, whew! Not fast, not slow, at a medium rate. Had a couple inches of yeast cake on the top. So I went to school all day today and just got back, and upon opening the door to my apartment I was immediately overwhelmed by a rather pungent, albeit pleasant, beer odor. "Interesting" I thought. Yes, interesting indeed.
So I peered into my bathroom, aka my resident fermentation chamber, only to see the yeast cake now extended up to the airlock on my carboy with foam coming out the top. This had happened several times before on previous brews, mostly due to insufficient headroom while using buckets.
So, per the usual perscription, I sanitized another airlock, and proceeded to pull the other off and wipe down the carboy. Immediately, the stopper and airlock shot out of my hand and I was covered, drenched, in yeasty sticky hoppy beer. Everything in my damn bathroom was covered, spots even hit the ceiling. My towel, toilet, sink, toothbrush, mirror, everything was dripping. And what's more it kept on foaming, enough to fill a pint glass every three seconds.
The carboy is still foaming, although now it has the bottom part of a two-piece airlock on it. Honestly I don't think there is much point in jamming an airlock on right now, the CO2 production is still through the roof. I mean, I can hear it fermenting in the other room, without a damn airlock!
Lessons that I learned today:
1) When doublepitching a big beer, keep it in the bathtub for 4 or 5 days.
2) Something I thought I had but clearly did not: patience
3) Cleaning up after brewing never ends
I took a video of the foaming action after the incident on my phone, I'll try and post it later. Has this or anything similar ever happened to anyone before? Or am I the only one standing on a chair wiping beer from their ceiling??
Update: Video! This is after the second explosion after I moved the beer to my bathtub, after I stuck a carboy stopper in the carboy (no airlock), and shot off a few minutes later
Up close of the foaming action:
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