BeerBorg

2 fermenters in the chamber, both filled rather high. I put a blow off on one right away but after a day and a half, never did put on on the other. Woke up this morning and caught it just in time. The airlock was clogged and there was yeast funk all over the chamber, oozing out of the seal. I cleaned it the best I could with the little free space there was to get to the funk and put on a blow off tube. I cursed myself because it's such an easy thing to do and I should really do it each and every batch. I deserve the mess I got.
Gonna be fun when it comes time to clean the keezer, but I deserve it.
The moral is, follow your beer gut!

I always thought having a beer gut would be useful for something. Since fermenting at lower temperatures I haven't had to use a blow off tube all last year. Before leaving for Florida I gave my brewroom an early Spring cleaning, the chest freezer thankfully took little effort.

Its at cool, 65.5 degrees. I find 001 very nice at 65-66 but I over filled both fermenters.

Except for Lagers, Ales get a blowoff tube for the first few days regardless.
A lesson learned some time ago.

I've always had to put blow-off tubes on my 1 gallon batches and even some of my 2.5 gallon recipes. Putting the 1 g recipes in a 2 g Mr. Beer fermenter took care of needing the blow-off tube and wasting beer going out the tube.

I haven't used an air lock in a really long time. I see no purpose in removing a blow off tube and putting an air lock in. The blow off tube locks the air out just fine. My tube goes into a bucket.

I should use a blow off all the time too since all my beers are brewed to be 6 gallons. The Brewbucket is usually not a problem because it's actually 7 gallons and wide at the top and rarely causes a problem. The Big Mouth however gets narrow at the top and that forces more krausen to the top.
But, I also didn't decant my starter and that added another 1.5 liters of liquid to each fermenter. So, I knew, I knew, I knew but I was lazy doing the simplest of things. I actually caught it before it would have been much worse but it's not the way I want to start off my day.

Gymrat wrote:I haven't used an air lock in a really long time. I see no purpose in removing a blow off tube and putting an air lock in. The blow off tube locks the air out just fine. My tube goes into a bucket.

^^^^^ This! ^^^^^

In fact, the only time I use an airlock is when I have to move my second blowoff to a third fermenter...

Well, and for long secondaries (wine, mead etc...)

Otherwise, the blowoff os all that's needed.

Since I usually have three batches going at once, I rotate the blow-off tube weekly, to go on each new batch. Sometimes it's needed, sometimes it's not, but better safe than sorry. I change out the blow-off after one week and put on an airlock, then wash and sanitize the blow-off equipment.