Primary Blow Up

[edkittley]

Blew the top smooth off the fermenter on 2nd day of fermentation! Came home from work, noticed the door on my fridge was cracked just a smidge, thought that was funny. Opened up the door and WOW! Inside of fridge was splashed with wort and the fermenter lid was on the bottom of the fridge next to the bucket. Airlock was full of krausen and there was a good deal of it in the fermenter as well. I figured the beer should be alright. I cleaned the lid and airlock real good, actually scalding hot water took everything right off. Hit them with a good dose of Star San. Slapped the lid back on and hopefully I'm good to go.

The brew was a Fat Tire Clone (extract) and I threw in a capsule of BrewVint Yeast Fuel. So much for doubting dry yeast. I'm thinking the extra fuel got it going pretty good. OG was 1.055 so it's not all that big of a beer, but I guess those yeasties wanted out.

Pics didn't turn out that good 'cause I used my phone, but you get the picture.

What I saw when I opened the fridge?

Krausen!

Why am I proud? :rockin:

 

[gxm]

Some yeasts lend themselves more to huge krausens than others. What did you use?
High temperatures can also lead to blowoff. I see you have a temperature probe in the fridge. Is it in the beer or in air? If it's in air, you may have a significantly higher temp in the beer than the air temp.
I like to use water as a thermal mass to control fermenter temps. If you put the fermenter into another tub with a few gallons of water, it will help control temp swings. You could then put the probe in the external water.

 

[November]

I live in to mountains and have difficulty getting liquid yeast to survive the trip out here, particularly in the desert summer. For this reason, I use dry yeast frequently. You didn't mention which yeast you used, but I can say from my experience dry yeast is very consistent and often leads to vigorous fermentations. I can't tell you how many times I've had 'splosions like the one you pictured. I recommend getting your hands on a vittle vault from the pet store and turning it into a fermenter. I don't use this every time, but when a brew seems like it might get a little frisky I put it into the vault to prevent the wife from getting angry about the abstract "beer art" on the walls.

 

[edkittley]

I used a Nottingham Yeast from DanStar and I had the fridge set at 66 degrees. The probe is in the air, not the brew. I had considered switching to a carboy with a cap so that I can have a blow off tube and a proper probe in the beer for primary. Guess this will push the switch.

 

[Picobrew]

I used a Nottingham Yeast from DanStar and I had the fridge set at 66 degrees. The probe is in the air, not the brew. I had considered switching to a carboy with a cap so that I can have a blow off tube and a proper probe in the beer for primary. Guess this will push the switch.

Just take out the floating part in the airlock and hook a tube up to the airlock for blowoff. Also, since the lid blew off, the airlock bit that dips into the bucket probably got clogged tho - I usually saw off that X shaped bit on the bottom of the airlock, it is really prone to get clogged. Anyway, after you do that, you can just pop a tube right on the airlock and yank/replace with the floaty bit when you are done with blowoff.

I have to do this on all my batches because I ferment about 5.25-5.5 gallons in 6gallon fermenters.