My First EXPLOSION !!!

[Home Brewski]

Someone puked in your primary.

 

[doubleb]

:rockin: Beer explosions rock.:rockin: Its nice to blow stuff up once in a while, right? It'll make drinking that beer more enjoyable.

 

[Liquidicem]

I tend to use a blow off for the first few days of any brew. I have a 1.044 Kolsch in the primary and even that would have blown its lid without a blow off tube. I think today (day 4) I will swap the tube out for an airlock.

 

[McSwiggin']

Nice post, I remember my first "Krausen Monster" climbing on my wall

 

[GIusedtoBe]

with the usual 6.5 gallon carboy and airlock w/ the only prob being the hefe that I pitched with pretty much all of the yeast from a previous batch. That one came through the air lock but never blew the thing off the carboy. What size tubing is that and is it just stuck in the neck of the carboy?

Regards,
Al

 

[BrewProject]

i'm doing a bavarian hefe next.

no doubt i will be using a blow over tube... problems are to be expected...

 

[SFsorrow]

Wow, I just brewed a 1.080 coffee stout (which got contaminated in the secondary ) using a white plastic ale bucket and pitched a half gallon yeast starter in with it and I did not have any trouble with blow off.
I'm still glad I read this as I am about to attempt another big beer, which, I do not yet know.

 

[rickfrothingham]

For me it’s not just one factor but several:

If the bill has a lot of wheat malt, I tend to get violent fermentations.
If I’m using a Belgian Wit yeast, the krausen seems to grow and grow.
If I'm pitching on a yeast cake I'm sure to have some blow off.
If I go over 1.060, I don’t take my chances.

This is all good advice; from my experience it all boils down to two main factors:
1. speed/rate of fermentation
2. krausen persistence - if your foam is particularly persistent, the stuff on top will stick around while it builds and builds from the bottom until it clogs your airlock

Speed of fermentation is going to depend on several factors -
How high your yeast pitching rates are (if you pitch high, there are a lot more yeast doing the fermentation, which means faster fermentation). Pitching on a yeast cake should obviously be considered a 'high pitch rate' scenario.
How high your gravity is - more food for the yeast
How aggressive your strain of yeast is.
Temperature - higher temperatures will increase yeast activity
Ingredient bill - some ingredients, like honey, require more time to ferment and cause a slow fermentation. Others, like corn sugar adjucts, tend to ferment extremely quickly.

Krausen Persistence also depends on a few things,
Type of yeast used - some yeasts cause 'thicker/stickier' krausens. Weizen strains are notorious.
Ingredient Bill - many brewers consider wheat to cause a very sticky/persistent krausen

The point here being that there are a lot of factors that can cause your fermentation to happen at a quick rate and create a lot of krausen, and some of them are pretty hard to predict - if you are ever in doubt, just use a blow-off.

cheers!