Hi Folks....so I made a starter w/ california ale White Labs 001 and pitched it after only 24 hours on the stir plate...(logistical issue had to brew quicker than I thought I would)....everything was going great until the next morning when I opened my closet and the pressure had literally blown the airlock off the carboy (yeast EVERYWHERE in my closet)..... Yes I did indeed use a blowoff tube...and this still happened. First time it's every happened to me. Is it because I pitched the yeast when it was too active?? (i.e. after only 24 hours) thanks
Typically Chico yeast strains aren’t pukers. What temperature is it fermenting at? Lowering the temperatures will help control the krausen. The other thing that may have caused it is an overpitch. Too high of a temp and too much yeast can cause that big time. When beers ferment hard, they need more head room in the fermenter, so you could reduce volume next time. Other than the mess, it’s usually a good sign. Some of the best beers I ever made puked out everywhere. Brew on!
I'm going to guess that the fermenter is a little on the small side for the batch and you left hops in or had substantial unintended hop residue going into the fermenter. Lots of break material might do the same thing, but one way or another, your airlock got clogged and the pressure built up. Doesn't take much to blow a rubber stopper out. You say you used a blow-off tube, but I'm guessing you had it connected to a dry airlock. Skip the airlock altogether and get a tube that'll go right into the stopper.That way there's nothing to constrict the flow when you get krausen, break and hops pushing out. I've got some big 1 1/4" (?) tubing that'll slip right inside the neck of the carboy... it's impossible to clog that.
Thanks so much everyone. Yes I indeed have the tube going into the airlock w/ no lid, and then into the rubber stopper. I'll see about getting tubing that will fit right into a stopper or the carboy itself. The other thing is that I think i didn't have enough headroom...5 gallon carboy w/ a 5 gallon batch doesn't do the trick I've secured myself a 6 gallon carboy so problem solved!
As long as it was blowing the top off? Likely not. Bacteria and yeast can neither crawl nor swim so as long as the flow was outbound, you should be okay. If the flow were in the opposite direction? Likely. Let the beer ferment out and see if there are any noticeable off-flavors. Without a fancy lab and luck, that's the only way to tell.
Did it look like this? Note the lack of head space. Next batch had a blow off tube. I think everybody does it at least once. Had a friend that didn't want to lose any beer so he put the blow off tight in another carboy... Kind of like a loose fire hose in his coat closet when it blew. His wife was more than just pissed.
Dead on. This is exactly what happened the one time I left A) Little to No head space and B) left a ton of residue in the beer during my early days. I was renting a house at the time and literally turned a bedroom into what looked like Alien if I came in there with a .50 and shot 37 foreign species. Since then, I've only used a blowoff once, and definitely less need (no matter the yeast strand or gravity) with the proper vessel space.
