or... This Krausen's Gone Crazy!
or... My First Blow-Off Tube.
I've only made about 6 batches of beer before this one, and in the past I've had no problems using the little 3-piece plastic airlock on the primary bucket, filled with vodka. Yesterday I made a winter beer that included a lot more DME than I've used in the past, and 13oz of maple syrup, ending with an OG of 85, which is also a lot higher than I've done in the past. Everything went as well as can be expected, I pitched the Wyeast and put the primary in the guest bathtub with the shower curtain drawn. When I went to bed, it was bubbling beautifully and I kind of wanted to curl up with it.
About 4am there was some huge BOOM in our house. It woke us both up and my wife said "I've been hearing hissing noises for a while, I figured it was the beer but didn't want to wake you up." I'm so glad I had the shower curtain pulled, because it was a wortpocalypse in there. The lid had flown completely off the bucket and was upside down at the other end of the bathtub. The shower walls and ceiling were covered in krausen and hop bits. I cleaned up, washed the lid and airlock, then set it on top of the bucket without snapping it down so there would be no more drama before the morning.
This morning the lid was lifted about 6 or 8 inches off the bucket, perched on a creepy column of krausen foam, listing badly to one side (insert port joke here). I cleaned everything up again, this time snapping down my lid and putting the airlock in with just enough pressure to hold it, hoping that if anything blew it would just be the airlock. Within about 10 minutes the airlock was full of brown krausen. I got on the computer and started googling. It sounds like I need a blow-off tube.
So for any other first-time explosion sufferers out there, I post my story, and my current solution, and you salty dogs can tell me if I've done this all wrong. I cut a 1" piece from an old racking cane, which happens to fit perfectly into the small black grommet in place of the airlock. To this bit of cane I attached my old siphon tubing, and put the downstream end of it in a growler half-full of sanitizing solution. I set that growler on the floor of the tub (to keep it lower than the lid). Now the gas is bubbling out through the blow-off tube and into the growler, and nothing can accidentally siphon back into the bucket.
After doing this I realized the siphon tube was about 40% too long... it left all sorts of bends and uphill climbs for any krausen that might be trying to flow through the tube. So I cut the tubing to make it just long enough to go straight from the lid downhill into the growler with no bends.
So far so good. It's bubbling like crazy and I'll just have to hope that no infection took hold. I'm a little worried that the rack cane might cause a bottleneck where junk could collect until it blows up again, but it's the same diameter as my 3-piece airlock, so I currently do not have a better solution (apart from getting a bigger hose and grommet, then drilling a bigger hole in the lid). In case it tries to blow the lid completely off again, I've loosely draped a clean towel around the lid edges so that it can still come off, but hopefully will keep the splatter to a minimum.
or... My First Blow-Off Tube.
I've only made about 6 batches of beer before this one, and in the past I've had no problems using the little 3-piece plastic airlock on the primary bucket, filled with vodka. Yesterday I made a winter beer that included a lot more DME than I've used in the past, and 13oz of maple syrup, ending with an OG of 85, which is also a lot higher than I've done in the past. Everything went as well as can be expected, I pitched the Wyeast and put the primary in the guest bathtub with the shower curtain drawn. When I went to bed, it was bubbling beautifully and I kind of wanted to curl up with it.
About 4am there was some huge BOOM in our house. It woke us both up and my wife said "I've been hearing hissing noises for a while, I figured it was the beer but didn't want to wake you up." I'm so glad I had the shower curtain pulled, because it was a wortpocalypse in there. The lid had flown completely off the bucket and was upside down at the other end of the bathtub. The shower walls and ceiling were covered in krausen and hop bits. I cleaned up, washed the lid and airlock, then set it on top of the bucket without snapping it down so there would be no more drama before the morning.
This morning the lid was lifted about 6 or 8 inches off the bucket, perched on a creepy column of krausen foam, listing badly to one side (insert port joke here). I cleaned everything up again, this time snapping down my lid and putting the airlock in with just enough pressure to hold it, hoping that if anything blew it would just be the airlock. Within about 10 minutes the airlock was full of brown krausen. I got on the computer and started googling. It sounds like I need a blow-off tube.
So for any other first-time explosion sufferers out there, I post my story, and my current solution, and you salty dogs can tell me if I've done this all wrong. I cut a 1" piece from an old racking cane, which happens to fit perfectly into the small black grommet in place of the airlock. To this bit of cane I attached my old siphon tubing, and put the downstream end of it in a growler half-full of sanitizing solution. I set that growler on the floor of the tub (to keep it lower than the lid). Now the gas is bubbling out through the blow-off tube and into the growler, and nothing can accidentally siphon back into the bucket.
After doing this I realized the siphon tube was about 40% too long... it left all sorts of bends and uphill climbs for any krausen that might be trying to flow through the tube. So I cut the tubing to make it just long enough to go straight from the lid downhill into the growler with no bends.
So far so good. It's bubbling like crazy and I'll just have to hope that no infection took hold. I'm a little worried that the rack cane might cause a bottleneck where junk could collect until it blows up again, but it's the same diameter as my 3-piece airlock, so I currently do not have a better solution (apart from getting a bigger hose and grommet, then drilling a bigger hole in the lid). In case it tries to blow the lid completely off again, I've loosely draped a clean towel around the lid edges so that it can still come off, but hopefully will keep the splatter to a minimum.
I'm still finding little bits of hops and sludge stuck in incredibly inaccessible places.
