Poll: using a blow off tube

[jschein]

My 5/8” silicone blow off tube sits in a 1 liter flask with about 500 ml of StarSan. Even that has overflowed at times, but easy to clean up. That’s on a 7 gallon fermenter with almost 5 gallons of wort.

I do the same but with a bowl underneath. I had one bubble up and over. Lesson learned

 

[Herm brews]

Back when I started brewing, my fermenters were 1 gallon glass carboys. Fermenting 1.5 gallons meant 0.75 gallon in each carboy. One of the only times I have used a blowoff tube was a “just in time” case, where I returned home to find a just starting and very vigorous fermentation. I quickly replaced the airlocks with blowoff tubes, thereby avoiding a big mess in our under the stairway closet that held jackets and served as my fermentation space. Knock on wood, there have not been any serious messes made in my 7.5 years of brewing.

 

[Ward Chillington]

Sometimes.
My fermenter does not have a lot of headspace, so if I’m using an aggressive yeast or making a high gravity beer, I’ll use a blowoff. English yeasts never reach the top of my fermenter. If I’m unsure, then I see no reason to risk it. All you need is one mess to clean and that’s that

Yeah same here..my guidelines are malt and headspace. My dark brews have a propensity to super krausen so I'll lot to just drop the blow off tube right into a bucket and not use a fermenter bulb at all.