Beer Forum

I really watched my last fermentation really closely -- probably once every 6 hours I took a look at it. I noticed that the first day it had a nice 1 to 2 inch krausen head on top. After the first day or so, it took off and the krausen filled the headspace of the carboy and shot a good amount of yeast through the blowoff tube and into my jar of starsan.

I had it kept at 68 until it started to die down at which point I pumped it up to 72 (This is a Wit Beer fermentation).

I don't know how people use airlocks if they are getting this violent of a fermentation. Am I doing something wrong?

Stevorino wrote:I really watched my last fermentation really closely -- probably once every 6 hours I took a look at it. I noticed that the first day it had a nice 1 to 2 inch krausen head on top. After the first day or so, it took off and the krausen filled the headspace of the carboy and shot a good amount of yeast through the blowoff tube and into my jar of starsan.

I had it kept at 68 until it started to die down at which point I pumped it up to 72 (This is a Wit Beer fermentation).

I don't know how people use airlocks if they are getting this violent of a fermentation. Am I doing something wrong?

Sounds fine - sometimes I have a really vigorous fermentation and need a blowoff tube but most of the time I don't need one

I don't know if its true but I found the more non malt sugar that I use (honey, corn sugar) the more the yeast go crazy

Blowmax10 wrote:

Stevorino wrote:I really watched my last fermentation really closely -- probably once every 6 hours I took a look at it. I noticed that the first day it had a nice 1 to 2 inch krausen head on top. After the first day or so, it took off and the krausen filled the headspace of the carboy and shot a good amount of yeast through the blowoff tube and into my jar of starsan.

I had it kept at 68 until it started to die down at which point I pumped it up to 72 (This is a Wit Beer fermentation).

I don't know how people use airlocks if they are getting this violent of a fermentation. Am I doing something wrong?

Sounds fine - sometimes I have a really vigorous fermentation and need a blowoff tube but most of the time I don't need one

I don't know if its true but I found the more non malt sugar that I use (honey, corn sugar) the more the yeast go crazy

I guess I've just never understood how people can use airlocks -- it seems that I get at least a little blowoff material in every fermentation.

if you're rockin a 5 gallon carboy maybe upgrade to a 6.5 gallon but keep your batch size the same.
also get yourself some fermcap-s and put that shit in the boil.

but to answer your question: no.

i switched to 6.5 gallon carboys hoping to leave the blowoff tube behind, but I still get volcanos on a regular basis.

If I'm in anything less than a 6.5 gal carboy, I play it safe w/ a blowoff... (even w/ fermencap.... maybe I'm not following the 2 drops per gal rule...)

I ferment in 6.5 gal carboys and have never used a blowoff, but a couple times have had to clean and replace the airlock due to a good strong fermentation. The krausen usually does fill most to all of the headspace though. Sounds like you're not doing anything wrong, you just got a really good ferment going.