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Airlock Overfilled, What Now?

WyattFNEarp

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So I did started my first batch of beer last night and all things considered I came out fairly unscathed. I had an epiphany though this morning.... the airlock has a fill line! So, clearly I missed that and overfilled it (pic below). My question is should I take the lid off and try to take some water out to get it to the appropriate level or is it fine to leave it. I'm not exactly sure how I'd remove it at this point, unsure if I have an eye dropper, but if I do I suppose that would be the safest way. Just worried that by overfilling it may lead to issues with the blowoff.

Thanks for the help


 
Worst that will happen is that as the brew puts pressure in the airlock, the excess water will be pushed out the holes in the lid.
 
Alright. Thanks. I'll just leave it alone and let it do it's thing then.
 
or....pull it out, pour a little bit of it out and put it back in.  It won't hurt a thing to be off for 10 seconds.

I make sour beers from time to time.  They are under an airlock for 1 to 3 years.  Evaporation means that I have to pull them off about once a month, clean the, sanitize them, refill them and put them back on.

I've never had an issue with removing the airlock for short periods of time for fermentation maintenance.

By the way, you'll eventually have to take it off and put them back on for three consecutive days when you think your fermentation is complete.  You'll want to check the final gravity each of those three days, to make sure your final gravity is stable, before you proceed to bottling your beer.
 
Yeah, I was thinking more of taking the cap off and using a sanitized liquid medicine syringe to draw some out thereby leaving the airlock in place.

Interesting on the 3 day gravity testing. I'm super green and using Palmer's book for a guide. I'll have to dig into the fermentation and bottling sections a bit more heavily.
 
Ha-ha. Had to take it off after all. Woke up to foam coming out of the airlock and gumming up the works. Ended up having to switch to a blowoff tube as seen below. Maybe the fermenter is overfull.

I'm thinking it would be good to switch back to the airlock in a couple days?
 

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The blowoff tube should be below the level of the fermenter, not above it.  When it stops blowing off, you might get back pressure that will pull all of the nasty contaminated gunk back into your beer.
 
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