Running out of room - quickly!

[Kealia]

I made an extract batch on Wed night and miscalculated my boil off by just a bit so I ended up with a bit more than I expected (still on target gravity which was nice).

I left enough for a 'more than adequate' Angel's Pour / some for the homies, and still ended up with a pretty full carboy. I knew headspace was limited so I used a blowoff tube. This morning, it's pushing maximum capacity:



Fortunately this is in my old beer fridge which is now my fermenting chamber so any mess will be contained. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

If it starts pushing krausen out I'll boil and cool some water to swap in for the Star San and harvest the yeast from the blowoff.

[BlackDuck]

Yea baby.....look at the sucker go!!!

[Beer-lord]

I just wish I had a fridge to use for fermenting and the space for it. But I'm very slowly working on that.

[Kealia]

You guys may need to duck. If this blows, you may hear it!

[duff]

Looks good.

What sort of recipe and yeast?

I had a blow out once and luckily it was in a minifridge. Made clean up a lot easier.

[Kealia]

It's an extract Blue Moon clone using rehydrated US-05. Fermenting at 64.

5 hours later, it's almost at the bung:

[mtsoxfan]

my only blowout was using us-05... i did harvest that as well, used 3 more times and waiting on an ispiration...

[BlackDuck]

WARNING. It's at critical volume, take cover and prepare for blowout!

[Brewbirds]

Well I love yeast porn as much as the next brewer but since I am a LBK user I'll ask in case others are also interested.

When fermenting in a carboy where would you have normally stopped for enough head room?

As a clueless one to these bottles it looks like the wort stopped way down the bottle about equivalent to where an LBK might stop for 2.69 gal. (a full case of 24-12 ounce bottles).

I see how much the Krausen has risen in the new pic but can you tell us where it would have been if this is unusually high?

I guess you got a more fermentable wort than expected?

And you switched to a blow off tube from an airlock because they are less susceptible to clogging?

Post yeast pics on the Borg at your own peril.

[FedoraDave]

Birdie, I marked both my Better Bottle carboys (primary and secondary) with incremental marks for each gallon up to 5. Looks like Ron's at about the 5 gallon line with his wort. That's about where mine is, anyway. Plenty of headroom, normally.

FWIW, with all my AG fivers, I use a blow-off tube, at least for the first week. You never know how a yeast is going to take off, and I've gotten my share of over-run from the blow-off. After having a couple of airlocks clog and go flying, I'm not taking any chances. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

[Brewbirds]

Birdie, I marked both my Better Bottle carboys (primary and secondary) with incremental marks for each gallon up to 5. Looks like Ron's at about the 5 gallon line with his wort. That's about where mine is, anyway. Plenty of headroom, normally.

FWIW, with all my AG fivers, I use a blow-off tube, at least for the first week. You never know how a yeast is going to take off, and I've gotten my share of over-run from the blow-off. After having a couple of airlocks clog and go flying, I'm not taking any chances. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I've seen where you guys switch from air lock to blow tubes, I got a carboy and airlock a while back and only used it once so far. Is it because the hole in the airlock is so tiny vs. the tubing?

Also how do you guys "decide ???" how much head space you need? The same would also apply to an Ale Pale?

[FedoraDave]

I have no experience with an Ale Pail, so I'll let someone else handle that.

But the way I figure it, I'm making 5 or 5.5 gallon batches, and the headspace is built into the carboy. It probably holds over six gallons total, if you fill it all the way to the lip.

But consider this, as well: I figure my numbers (grain/hops bills, OG, FG, ABV) with 5 gallons in mind. Adding more liquid somewhere along the way is going to skew those numbers, as well as constrict the headspace, obviously. To me, it's not worth it just to try to get two or three more bottles out of a batch. Those carboys are designed to brew 5 gallons of beer, so that's what I use them for. If I wanted to do larger batches, I'd look into larger carboys. Essentially, the decision was made for me (and by me, since I decided to buy carboys of this size).

As for the hole in the airlock being tiny, yes. It can clog pretty easily if the krausen gets too high. Also, if the fermentation is really aggressive, the airlock may not be able to vent all that CO2 quickly enough.

[Kealia]

Dave is correct in MOST of what he said. Except that this is a 3G carboy so that's not a 5G wort line

It's hard to tell from the pic but the wort is actually up just past the point where the carboy starts to get smaller (rounded). I generally keep it an inch or two below that mark to allow for enough headspace.

Airlocks are great if you have a LOT of headspace or the most active part of fermentation is over. For anything this full, it's a guaranteed blow off with an airlock because I fully expect the krausen to make it's way into the blowoff jar soon.

I had an airlock clog from the krausen once and it popped that sucker right off. I've heard of others having the carboy explode because the airlock got clogged and krausen dried in the neck sealing it so the bung wouldn't give. And yes, I use glass.

Since I'm working from home today I can perve on this a lot to keep tabs on activity. I just finished boiling some water that I'll cool and swap out soon so I can keep any yeast that get blown out. Too heavy of a concentration of Star San will kill them so I have to swap it out if I want to harvest the yeast. Then again, it's US-05 so it's cheap if I don't.

[berryman]

Wow Kealia that is a pretty pic, I like action and you got some. The 05 yeast must really like what you gave them to work on. That's an example why I liked my 6.5 on a true measured 5 gal batch, enough headspace for an out-of-control ferment. Keep us posted.

[Kealia]

Yeah, I would typically do a 2.5G batch in here but I figured that I'd push the volume this time.