Holy Crap!
Posted: Mon Apr 19, 2010 1:45 pm
Ok, so I brewed my American Brown ale yesterday. put into the fermentors and oxygenated for 2 minutes, then pitched a 1 liter starter into each pale.
I put lids on the pales and airlocks. I figured that this was not an extremely big beer and an airlock would do the trick. Fermentation started up within about 4 hours.
So I went down stairs this morning to roll smokes for the day as I usually do. Figured I would peak in and watch the bubbles for a second. When I opened the door. The lid was sitting about 10 foot away from the pale. Nice huh. Other pale had a bulge in it. But airlock was bubbling away. I sanitized the airlock and lid again and put back on, it started to bubble through the lock. Went upstairs and was finishing up my tasks before going to work. Boom, I knew exactly what this was. Went downstairs and again lid was 10 feet away from the ferementer. As I did not have the right size tubing for a blow off tube. I once again sanitized the lid and air lock. Went to work. Came home at lunch after doing some research on work arounds for blow off tubing. BOTH LIDS WERE ON THE GROUND. Sanitizied everything again, rigged up some blow off tubes and away they went. They were still freaking out when I left.
Moral of the story, guys, ditch the air locks and move to blow off tubes. You never know when you are going to get really active fermentations that are beyond the capabilities of an air lock. This was an American brown ale, starting grav of 1.059 feremented with WLP013 London Ale yeast. Who would have thought this would happen. Hopefully the batch is still good as it was very activity going and I discovered this quite quickly.
I put lids on the pales and airlocks. I figured that this was not an extremely big beer and an airlock would do the trick. Fermentation started up within about 4 hours.
So I went down stairs this morning to roll smokes for the day as I usually do. Figured I would peak in and watch the bubbles for a second. When I opened the door. The lid was sitting about 10 foot away from the pale. Nice huh. Other pale had a bulge in it. But airlock was bubbling away. I sanitized the airlock and lid again and put back on, it started to bubble through the lock. Went upstairs and was finishing up my tasks before going to work. Boom, I knew exactly what this was. Went downstairs and again lid was 10 feet away from the ferementer. As I did not have the right size tubing for a blow off tube. I once again sanitized the lid and air lock. Went to work. Came home at lunch after doing some research on work arounds for blow off tubing. BOTH LIDS WERE ON THE GROUND. Sanitizied everything again, rigged up some blow off tubes and away they went. They were still freaking out when I left.
Moral of the story, guys, ditch the air locks and move to blow off tubes. You never know when you are going to get really active fermentations that are beyond the capabilities of an air lock. This was an American brown ale, starting grav of 1.059 feremented with WLP013 London Ale yeast. Who would have thought this would happen. Hopefully the batch is still good as it was very activity going and I discovered this quite quickly.