vigorous fermentation

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bj2387

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just a curious question. hadnt brewed in about a year or so. last 2 batches have been about 2.5 to 3 gallon batches. mostly all grain with a 1lb of DME added. theyve both fermented in a 5 gallon bucket. the airlock has been going crazy on both brews with the liquid bubbling out of the top of the airlock even.

ive never had this happen to this degree of activity with the airlock, wondered if it had anything to do with the amount of space left in the 5 gallon bucket or its just an active fermentation then what im used to.
 
I've noticed on a few of my high gravity beers they will tend to blow the vodka out of the airlock in about 2 days are fermentation starts. so I would have to guess an aggressive fermentation. I'm not a pro by no means just going by what I've seen for myself. The few HG batches that dried the airlock were in a 5 gallon carboy filled to capacity with a blow off hose connected to a "double airlock" (blow off tube to a stainless steel tube into a 500 ml flask filled with 200 ml of vodka and the a S shaped airlock as the exit)

All my beer is fermented in this setup as my mini fridge isn't tall enough for a single airlock on top. The HG beer is the only one's I've had dry my airlock.
 
The head space does not make a difference for me with respect to how the airlock behaves when I do 3gal batches in 5 gal bucket. Sounds like an active fermentation, how much yeast did you use?
 
1 whole pack of dry yeast for each brew. ive been trying to get more of the math/science part of home brewing included this time around since i gave it up for a while. i know yeast is an important part and i need to pay more attention to how much im adding instead of just the whole pack.
 
I use half a pack of yeast for 5gal batches, the extra yeast might account for the vigorous airlock activity.


But sometime even with half a pack the airlock get pretty crazy, better to have more activity then less.


edit: I use half a yeast package for 3 gal batches not 5 gal batches which is 5.5gm of yeast
 
I use half a pack of yeast for 5gal batches

I know experiments exist that prove under-pitching doesn't necessarily harm your beer, but I tend to double-pitch my yeast to get early activity, and I only use five-gallon carboys. No real head space to speak of. So, that leads to me needing a blow-off tube for basically every single batch. I have just accepted it.

Here's a fun story for you:
The guy that runs my LHBS has helped launch 16 breweries around the country. He was telling me that krausen contains a lot of bitterness that you don't necessarily want in your beer. He said a lot of breweries purposefully allow the krausen to overflow into large buckets, and they discard it. He also said that krausen has a side effect of giving the drinker diarrhea. Have any of you ever heard such a thing?

Sorry to be gross, but I can't get the notion out of my head.
 
I know experiments exist that prove under-pitching doesn't necessarily harm your beer, but I tend to double-pitch my yeast to get early activity, and I only use five-gallon carboys. No real head space to speak of. So, that leads to me needing a blow-off tube for basically every single batch. I have just accepted it.

Sorry everybody, I use half a package of yeast for 3 gal batches, so that is like 5.5gm of US-05 or S-04.
 
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