Am I Screwed?!!!!

I'd ride it out. The positive pressure that forced out the air lock should have also kept out any of the bad things. Particularly if it's still going pretty good.

Let it run - what's the worse that can happen? You have to pour it out? I always give my brews a chance because I don't ever want to pour something on "might be" always on "is" - bad.

 

I agree with teal - ride it out, it might be ok. You can always pour it out later.

 

Many people/breweries use open fermenters for primary...you'll be just fine.

 

While I agree he will probably be fine, breweries that do open fermentation, do it in a very controlled/ clean environment. I am assuming this is a little different.

 

The principle thing I would be concerned about would be insects (e.g., fruit flies) getting into the homebrew. I would be willing to bet that the beer will turn out just fine.

Cheers!

 

Several questions:
Why are you racking INTO a primary fermenter?
What size is your carboy? (5 gal OR 6.5 gal?)
What was the temp of the carboy and ambient?
Hope the cleanup was not too extensive...cheers

 

You mean like this?



Where tourists and workers can walk-thorough and put their hands on the fermenter, breath into it, and bring whatever spores and bacteria they happen to be carrying around?

If you properly sanitized your equipment before the beginning of primary fermentation, then when primary is in full swing, it's pretty difficult to get an infection. You have to really try, or do something really dumb.

If he gets an infection, it won't be because his air-lock popped off.

 

Just curious, what brewery is that?

I was thinking more like this.

http://byo.com/stories/item/1211-open-fermentation-tips-from-the-pros

This is from the sierra nevada part,

The pitfalls are, of course, that you need to have a very clean fermentation environment (you should anyway), and watch your micro closely. We have sterile filtered air going into our fermenter room at a higher flow rate than the CO2 evacuation to try and cause a positive displacement situation.

I suppose open fermentation would be fine at home, but it should be attempted in a closed environment such as a cooler or temperature controlled box that can be properly sanitized.

 

The source I found the picture from just mentioned that it was a brewery in the UK.

You're absolutely right that you should make all attempts to keep the place as sterile as possible, especially if you're brewing at scale. I was simply using an extreme example of "open fermentation" to help mitigate concerns, as just because your air-lock pops out doesn't mean your beer is ruined...and would be pretty difficult to ruin at that point.

 

The other aspect of open fermentation and whether there is a requirement for a sterile environment is how much yeast you pitch. I would be willing to bet that the UK brewery uses a HUGE amount of yeast; they may even pour the cooled wort on top of a BIG yeast cake from the prior fermentation.

Hopefully the OP pitched a lot of yeast which gets the fermentation started real soon (he had a blow up which would seem to indicate a big start to his fermentation). The yeast creates an environment which mitigates the potential for an infection (for example, the yeast creates a lower pH environment which is inhospitable to bacteria growth).

Cheers!

 

“I am gathering from that comment that I should use a larger car boy if I'm using it as a primary fermenter ???” A BIG yes to that!

If you feel compelled to use a carboy, you need a 6.5 gallon carboy for the primary fermentation.

I would encourage you to consider using a plastic bucket instead, in particular a 7.9 gallon bucket. A 7.9 gallon bucket provides a lot of headspace for krausen.

Cheers!

 

I've seen this in German breweries too. Most of the American breweries practicing open fermentation (magic hat Sierra Nevada) get really paranoid and use clean rooms, positive pressure environments etc, but the old world brewers know that under certain circumstances that isn't necessary. When questioned about letting people learn over his open fermenters during tours, one German brewer told us that the yeast out competed anything that might end up in there and that there wasnt time for an infection to show up in the packaged product, since his beer didn't sit around for more than a month or two and was all consumed in the local area. This brewery produced something like 100,000bbl/year, so it certainly wasn't a poorly run operation.

My point is, while big nationally distributing craft breweries that bottle beers that may end up sitting on a warm shelf for a year can't risk this, under other circumstances you can count on an active fermentation to be reasonably resistant to infection. Under the circumstances of home brewing you should almost have to go out of your way to cause an infection that you will see before you have consumed your beer unless it is an imperial stout or something else you plan on cellaring long term.

 

Were you still in active fermentation? If so, you're fine unless something fell in. During active you have positive pressure due to the production of CO2. The other good news is CO2 is heaver than O2, so not only is the CO2 flowing out from the pressure, but the CO2 still in there is creating a nice CO2 blanket. It's not a sure thing, but pretty likely to be fine.

 

A bigger carboy is better but a cheaper immediate fix would be to use a blow off tub and/or fermcap.