Woke up Easter morning to some pretty terrible blowoff on my barley wine brew. Did a yeast starter and it started fermenting almost immediate!
Come to check on it this morning and I have a mess everywhere. I’m not happy, beers not happy, I stained the carpet, so the wife’s definitely not happy.
Being Easter, everything is shut down…as I live in a small Texas town. So, here’s what I did. I didn’t have a blowoff tube (this will be the next thing I buy). So I rubber banded a ziplock bag to the top of the carboy and cut a small hole in the bag. Keep in mind, blowoff is still coming out. I taped the tube I use to rack beer from fermenter to fermenter to the zip lock bag and stuck the other end of the tube in a mixing bowl filled with water.
I’m hoping this will minimize the amount of bad buggies that might have crept in over night. I worked as fast as possible, so I hope its not ruined.
Happy Easter!
[quote=“tk421clone”]Woke up Easter morning to some pretty terrible blowoff on my barley wine brew. Did a yeast starter and it started fermenting almost immediate!
Come to check on it this morning and I have a mess everywhere. I’m not happy, beers not happy, I stained the carpet, so the wife’s definitely not happy.
Being Easter, everything is shut down…as I live in a small Texas town. So, here’s what I did. I didn’t have a blowoff tube (this will be the next thing I buy). So I rubber banded a ziplock bag to the top of the carboy and cut a small hole in the bag. Keep in mind, blowoff is still coming out. I taped the tube I use to rack beer from fermenter to fermenter to the zip lock bag and stuck the other end of the tube in a mixing bowl filled with water.
I’m hoping this will minimize the amount of bad buggies that might have crept in over night. I worked as fast as possible, so I hope its not ruined.
Happy Easter![/quote]
It should be fine. With so much coming out not much can go in to contaminate it. Only concern would be fruit flies.
Good job on the make shift fix. Not always easy to think what to do when there is unhappiness around.
Danny is right, the beer is unlikely to get infected from this.
But rather than buying a blow-off tube, why don’t you just prevent blow-offs in the future? All you need is to keep the fermentation temperatures down and use a big enough primary - a 7.5 or 8 gallon bucket is pretty much ideal for 5 gallon batches. As a bonus, the beer will taste better if fermented at lower temperatures. I haven’t had a blow-off in 8 or 9 years, ever since I learned how to control my fermentation properly.
[quote=“rebuiltcellars”]Good job on the make shift fix. Not always easy to think what to do when there is unhappiness around.
Danny is right, the beer is unlikely to get infected from this.
But rather than buying a blow-off tube, why don’t you just prevent blow-offs in the future? All you need is to keep the fermentation temperatures down and use a big enough primary - a 7.5 or 8 gallon bucket is pretty much ideal for 5 gallon batches. As a bonus, the beer will taste better if fermented at lower temperatures. I haven’t had a blow-off in 8 or 9 years, ever since I learned how to control my fermentation properly.[/quote]
That’s some good advice. The weather has been hitting around 90 already, but we had a cool spell the past few days, so I thought I’d be okay in regards to fermenting temps. I should of stuck it in my celler. As far as the fermenter size, I was using a 6 gallon carboy…but it seems that wasn’t large enough.
Hopefully the fermentation will calm down in a few days and I can but a standard airlock back on it.
Thanks
