Beer-plosion

So my wife walks into the basement.

Sounds like the opening to a bad joke.

The other day I brewed NB Imperial Stout extract kit. Scottish Ale yeast, made a 1.7L starter per BeerSmith. Aerated the crap out of it during mixing. Hooked up a blowoff tube, normal 1/4" ID. Placed in basement. Temps in basement are usually a steady 70F all year round.

Went in basement the next morning around 6am to check on it. No activity. Had contractors over to do some work. Wife showed them the basement around 830. Still no activity. Around 330, one of the contractors says to my wife, "I think your next batch of beer is overly excited."

She went down stairs to witness this:



So, my question to all you unfortunate souls who ran into this issue before, what can one do to prevent such a calamity? Larger blowoff tube? Bigger bucket? Lower temps?

Thanks in advance.

All of the above as well as Fermcap-S. I've fermented big beers with a shockingly small amount of headspace and the fermcap kept the krausen to an inch or so. Cheers!

EDIT: And I don't know how Scottish Ale yeast behaves at 70+, but I do know it likes low temps.

Agreed on Scottish ale yeast liking lower temps.

Curiously....how old is your house and have you had that paint on the wall checked for lead?

Imagine that phone call...

"Honey, i think theres a problem with your beer kit...

Why do you say that?

Well the contractors just came up stairs covered in beer. They aren't complaining but are asking for a bag of pretzels"

Pratzie said:

Imagine that phone call...

"Honey, i think theres a problem with your beer kit...

Why do you say that?

Well the contractors just came up stairs covered in beer. They aren't complaining but are asking for a bag of pretzels"

Click to expand...

Haha. That would be awesome.

A 3rd on the lower fermentation temp - especially early on... A bigger diameter blow off tube would reduce the likelihood of any clogging/jamming, hence a blow up.

There are certainly worse things to get covered with - few better things really.

2nd on the larger blow off tube. You will have greatly decreased potential to clog and blow its top. On the plus side, at least the contractors knew what you were making. I predict the work they are doing taking another 3-4 weeks and them requiring a sample.

Another (more or less) uneducated guess would be that something the contractors did caused a sudden eruption of CO2 in the fermenter. I am not sure it can happen but maybe they were causing a lot of vibrations through hammering or such and this resulted in a lot of CO2 escaping from solution simultaneously. But if they were just doing electrical work then I'm just full of $hit Either way, another option would be to fill the fermenter less. I was lucky that I got less from by BVIP than expected an had ~2.5 gal head space and nothing happened.

I appreciate all responses.

Possibly not have contractors in my house is step #1, especially when they are in the basement farting around with the electrical panel. I fear they were trying some Frankenstein experiments with my beer.

I do know that in a couple weeks I am brewing a chai milk stout using the same yeast, so lower temps and bigger diameter blowoff tube might be the way to go.