My First Blowoff

[Derick_Z]

Pitched a slap pack last night and was wondering why I hadn't seen any activity after 10ish hours. Came down this morning, and was greeted by this!

It spewed foam all over me when I pulled out the clogged airlock, and it's still gushing nonstop so I've just been putting a paper towel over the hole and wiping away excess foam every now and then.

Good thing I came down when I did! The lid was bulging a lot and looked about ready to blow.

 

[RIC0]

watcha brewin ????

 

[JordanThomas]

How's your temp/gravity?

 

[inhousebrew]

If you're not careful those things will blow. Good thing you caught it. The nice thing about those airlocks is that you can take them apart and fit some tubing over the plastic piece in the middle and run that into a jar or sanitized water to create a blowoff tube. Use that until the fermentation dies down and put the airlock back together.

 

[F250]

How's your temp/gravity?

Yes, I'd be interested to know the temp of the wort and ambient.

Rick

 

[Derick_Z]

It's a hefeweizen with wyeast 3068. The yeast was from October 30th and my LHBS owner recommended 6 hours after smacking before pitching, but 3 hours in and it was incredibly swollen so I pitched.

Pitched at 71 degrees, current ambient is 69, wort temp is 72. Not sure about current gravity as I'm scared if I take the lid off I'll never get it back on! OG was ~1.052.

I was originally wiping it down and replacing the paper towel every 15ish minutes, but I left this one for about an hour and came back to this! I tried to rig a blowoff, but the tube was too narrow and clogged up as well. Guess I'll just have to wait for it to calm down some!

EDIT: Here's a quick video from just before the blowoff tube clogged up: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y7cgqp6tj3dai27/VIDEO0039.mp4

 

[inhousebrew]

yep, for a beast like that you'll need a bigger blowoff. You're still within the temp guidelines so you'll probably good on that front. Since you are using buckets I would go ahead and recommend the 7.5 gallon size. Shouldn't have to worry about blowoffs with that.

 

[Derick_Z]

I'm assuming there's not much to do with a bucket this size though, right? Might have to transfer the fermentation to the bathtub or something overnight if it hasn't slowed down! I may try to find a larger diameter tube if I can in case I ever need to again.

I'm planning on washing the yeast as I think a hefe might become a regular now that I've got a kegging setup, so I guess these kinds of blowoff might become the norm!