Lid ready to blow

Used a yeast starter to get a hefeweisse going fast but in all my yrs never seen this before. The lid is bowed up big time and I pulled the airlock to get sprayed by foam, yeast, hops residue. Never had this before. First time ramping up a starter to pitch. Thought I would get a fast start not a freaking out primary. Tried a blow off tube, same thing. It does not look plugged. Pull the tube and whoosh. It is just foaming out the lid plug hole now. Contamination? Over pitch? This all happened within 5 hours of pitching. Is this beer for the sewer?

Sounds like:
Your wort temperature is to warm.
Insufficient headspace.
All of the above plus using WY3068.

No sewer yet. My thinking is just vigorous fermentation. Way too soon for bacterial contamination to rear it’s many heads or flagella or whatever…What temperature is the fermentation occurring at? Go with the blowoff tube setup and give it time. Try to clean up as much as possible without making it worse.

[quote=“flars”]Sounds like:
Your wort temperature is to warm.
Insufficient headspace.
All of the above plus using WY3068.[/quote]
Like Flars said. Next time use a bigger bucket and keep the temperature lower; or just keep the temperature lower. I’m guessing this one will have a lot of banana to it.

Blow off tube is definitely a good move. Temp is 72 F. Which for a wheat I thought would be and should be good. Basement smells like wonderful banana bread. About 1 G of kreusen in the sink, still bubbling but collapsed some so another air lock is on. I was using a6.5 G plastic primary for 5G batch. What a ride! Not sure how to put a sizeable blow off tube on a bucket, may go carboy next time. Thanks for the replies. Now to clean up. So shave with this foam or wash it down, hmmm :smiley:

Bavarian wheat yeasts are pretty strong. My procedure is a qrt. starter, cool down to 62 deg. after boil, add 45 sec of pure oxygen thru a stone, let temp ramp up to 66-67 deg. where it stays for a wk. or so.Then 70 deg after most of the rigorous ferment slows down till finished. All with a blowoff tube.
I’m not a real fan of bubble gum and banana. This works mostly for me. Also I use WLP 351/WY 3638
instead of 3068.

As you brew more styles and for a longer time, you may notice that certain yeasts and grains tend to make for a more violent fermentation. Keeping the temperature near the low end of the range helps. Wheat always ferments like crazy for the first 2-3 days so I always use a blow off tube. You also need to cut the cross hairs out of the beer end of your airlock to keep it from clogging up there.

I always have blowoff with Wy3068, even in mid to low 60s F.

Once, after 3 days with a blowoff tube in, I switched to a 3 piece. Came home from work to find it foaming out the airlock.
I went to put the blowoff back on and the airlock blew out of my hand and sprayed beer up to the ceiling.

I use a 1" tube in a carboy, but some people use a tube large enough to fit over the tube in a 3 piece. Like Greg said, make sure to trim
off the cross out if it has one.

Greg brought up something I hadn’t thought about for a long time, but 20 yrs ago a well made Bavarian Wheat I tasted about made me hurl, and I swore to never drink one again. Now I make it at least 2-3 times a summer, and it’s mainly for me. Sometimes with age and time our tastes change, and beers I didn’t much care for I now really enjoy. Just another joy about home brewing.

I did two hefes last year, both popped the bucket lid within 16 hours of pitching.

I had no provision for blow-off tubing at that time, and I suspect it would have clogged narrow diameter tubing anyway. So I left the bucket on my bar counter, hanging over the sink, with paint- stirrers shimming the bottom so the bucket was slightly tilted toward the sink. I had the lid loosely attached, open over the sink, but snapped on the far side. Each batch barfed into the sink for about a day, after which I re-sanitized the bucket rim, lid, and airlock.

No serious mess, no ill effect on the beer, (other than my less than successful cherry purée recipe addition on the 2nd batch.) In hindsight I probably should have been more concerned about ants, but I didn’t have an issue, and proper blow-off tubing is the better answer anyway. I was just pleased with myself for the “redneck engineering”

But yea, 3068 is a blow-off monster. No other strain has given me that much blow-off.

Wheat beers also seem to be prone to a large krausen. Did a Witbier last month using WLP400 and got blow off in my 7.9 gallon Spiedel fermentors (which has headroom over and above the 7.9 gallons). I had never seen that much krausen before.

Thanks to all for the comments and guidance. It is lazily chirping away now. Hope to bottle the 11th. Will see.

Just checking back in. The hefe came out great. And I got me some new toys, which included a blow off tube and other stuff to make the shipping worthwhile of course. Thanks again.

Hefe yeast is crazy. I remember the smell of car exhaust coming from the fermenter, turned out great.