Fermentor blow off

Yeast & Fermentation
1

So I brewed the Dry Dock pale ale over the weekend, used the fast pitch with the
Wyeast liquid yeast, about 12 hours after pitchin to the wort I checked my fermentor.
The top was inflated and beer was shooting out of the air lock. I quickly sanitized the top
and made a make shift blow off valve. My question is did I ruin this batch? Whats my risk
for infection? Temp on the bucket was about 78 degrees

2

Very little risk of infection, but your temp has me worried. 78 is a little warm for most ale yeasts. Search on the forum for “temp control” or “swamp cooler” for some more info on keeping your fermentation temps lower. I wouldn’t say you ruined the batch, but warm fermentations can lead to some off flavors. Definitely finish your fermentation and package, but just know that you could do better with temp control.

1 Like
3

You should be ok. The co2 pushing the beer out most likely didn’t let anything in. My worry would be the temp your fermenting at. Not sure what yeast your using or what the temp range is for it. But 78 is kinda high for a lot of yeast and will make off flavors and make fusel alcohol and will give you one hell of a headache.

1 Like
4

It was only at 78 degrees for that intial couple hours. I got the temp down to 68 to 70 degrees
and have been able to hold it there since Monday morning. I was using Wyeast 1056 american
ale yeast. Thanks for the reply, That was the first batch I let get that warm.

5

So now that the beer has been fermenting at the correct temperature will the fusel
alcohols the may have been created go away with age or am I stuck with them?

6

If was only that temp for few hours you most likely didn’t make any. They will not fade with time. I would finish it out at the temps that the yeast says. Bottle it. Have you read John Palmer’s how to brew. It is free on the web. You could check it out. It’s a great book easy to understand and very helpful. I would say most brewers on here have read or owns the book

7

Fusel alcohols may not have been produced if the beer was to warm for the yeast for only a couple of hours. Hold the temperature steady at 68°F and continue as normal.

1 Like
8

Thanks for that info, !!! :grinning:

9

Some say that fusels age out. I have not experienced that and I have aged fusel laden beer for as long as 12 months with no noticeable change.

10

I saw a article back few years back in a magazine don’t remember think popular mechanic. That if your beer hadn’t fermented all the way to cold crash it let the yeast drop and then reboil your wort. Seemed like a lot of work but claimed you could boil off the fusel alcohol.

11

Yep, only way I could imagine it “aging out” is for something to metabolize it, and sacch ain’t gonna cut it. Possibly brett or pedio, as they can metabolize some crazy stuff, but most people don’t have that in their beer, at least that they’re aware. @HBC mentioned in another thread that there’s a pathway to esterify fusels, but again, need something more complex than sacch to do that, I believe.

12

Actually you would boil off all the etoh. It will start to boiling below the waters boiling pt about 180 deg at sea level. I boil off the alcohol to make noa beer for my wife.

1 Like
13

you should be fine . me all ways use a blow over hose to avoid this issue leave the blow over hose untill active fermenting slows down than switch to airlock .yes me got same problem to warm here .i start to use a swamp cooler works fine for temp control. you might want to do bit research in a different yeast strain what can handel higer fermenting temps me doing experiment with a kveik yeast did brew now two batches with this kind of yeast it supose to work with higer temps up to 100 fh now have to see what the end result will be took a grav reading and a taste sample did think taste good. good luck

2 Likes