;)
Barleywine Blow-off!
Posted by Trenchfoot in Beer, Equipment
Woah! Returned home to find the walls and ceiling of the utility room completely splattered like an explosion in a sewage plant. And the fermenter was invisible inside a four foot high seeting pile of brown foam. It took ages to clean up and fit an new airlock. I hope it hasn’t ruined the batch. The fermentation is still going like crazy and its really hot! Never had such a hot fermentation before – I wonder what effect that has on the beer?
Anyway, I guess I should have added one more drawback to pitching a fresh wort directly onto the yeast cake (see previous post on Re-using Yeast): Be prepared for blow-off and a hot fermentation!
Instead of using an airlock, I should have started off with a blow-off tube. In a monster fermentation, there can be an over-production of kraeusen (the technical name for that brown foam) which can clog an airlock – the pressure then builds up until boom! – the top blows off. Judging by the dent in the ceiling, mine must have fired up like a bullet. A blow-off tube is therefore made from a thicker diameter pipe or tube, with one end attached to the top of the fermenter and the other submerged in a sanitizer. Thats another thing to put on the equipment wish-list…
;)
;)
;)
;)
;)
Or you could just cover the top of the fermenter with a bit of tinfoil until the most energetic fermentation is over.
Good shout. Unfortunately the krausen was coming right up through the airlock. So the tinfoil trick would have still resulted in a mess. Though probably not on the ceiling. The stain is still there….