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Blow-Off - Saved Remotely!

philm63

Grandmaster Brewer
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Got a call from my wife (I'm traveling currently) - my hefe blew its lid! The small plastic lid on top of the air-lock blew off and the darn thing foamed over. I do not own a blow-off tube!! (I'll have to fix that!)

While on the phone, I told her to grab the "kettle drain hose" from the brew-lab wall (where I hang my hoses to dry) and dry-fit it to the plastic tube that is integral to the inside of the air-lock (She did this on an extra air-lock - I have several, they're cheap!) to make sure it would fit - it did!

So... I had her open the ferm-fridge and sanitize everything, set a flask full of Star-San next to the carboy and put one end of the hose in it, and remove the small plastic "floater" from the inside of the airlock and place the hose on the plastic tube that is inside the air-lock (most of you will know what I mean) - this effectively created a blow-off tube from the lower half of the air-lock to a flask of sanitizer and yes, it just kept bubbling away! Catastrophe averted! (My wife ROCKS!)


 
Did you have her sanitize the end of the hose that went into the bottom half of your airlock?  With that vigorous of a fermentation, it probably won't matter though.  You might have also wanted to have her check the temperature of your fermenting wort.  It might be quite high and the reason for the vigorous fermentation. 

I've taught my wife about sanitation and showed her how to attach my blowoff tubes, just in case I have one go off while I'm traveling.  I also have the little stickies on my carboys that tell her the temp.  She knows that if they go over 70 degrees F. to wrap a wet towel around it and put a fan on it.

I've never had an airlock clog when I've kept the tempatures at 70 degrees or less. 

I recently made a tootsie roll stout that was my regular 11% ABV RIS with 5 pounds of melted tootsie rolls stirred in at the end of the boil.  I pitched 3/4 of a gallon of harvested London Ale yeast into it.  It went to 16% ABV in a week and no blow off.  When I racked it to the secondary after a week, it tasted like tootsie roll flavored bourbon.  Trust me, it's a really good taste!

I just pitched a package of Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast into it yesterday to make sure that when I bottle it in two weeks, I'll be able to actually get carbonation.  I've already asked too much of the London Ales yeast.  It started bubbling the airlock again after two hours, but only slowly after I put the champagne yeast in.

Keep your temps down and you might be surprised out how little you have to worry about blowoff tubes.  I'm going to make a fermentation chamber for my next project, so that I don't have to worry about it.
 
That is a good sign that you married a keeper!

I have gone to buckets that are about 8 1/2 or 9 gallon sized for five gallon batches to avoid this.
I also bought a speidel 60L ( 15.9 gallon ) fermenter for 10 gallon batches.  I never worry about a blowout anymore.

I do need to source a cheap fridge big enough for the speidel though or else it will only be seasonable use.

 
PLEASE TAKE NOTE - After this blow-off, there was a fair amount of "sludge" deposited on the carboy, "brew-hauler" (carboy carrying harness), elastic band holding the folded towels against the thermocouple for the temperature controller, aforementioned folded towels, and the bottom of the ferm-fridge (chest freezer).

I thought nothing of it until the smell hit me come time to check the SG. (GAG!!!)

IF, and I say "if" because if you've read other posts describing this event you will hopefully have taken the proper precautions and this won't happen to you - IF you have a blow-off that deposits sludge in an enclosed space; DO NOT LET IT SIT!!! Clean and sanitize everything and put it back in the enclosure, whatever it might be.

Just trust me on this one...
 
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