Is this normal?

I've seen it a time or two! At least you used foil and not an airlock!

 

Looks like a very thick krausen blowing off from a very dark beer . . . gotta say that's all normal to me. Aroma must be fantastic, can almost smell it from the photo. If you can collect the blow off in a sanitary way it should be rich in the healthiest yeast. What is the strain?

 

Anything I brew that is over about 1.070 OG and 5+ gallons tends to blow off. I now plan for it, which can be done in a number of different ways. There's fermcap, the anti-foaming agent, or you can split the batch after pitching and aeration into 2 buckets, ensuring more head space.

With multiple buckets, you can also choose different yeast strains for variety, or use the same and recombine later either for an extended secondary, or into the bottling bucket or keg.

 

Looks tasty! Let us know how it finishes.

 

Oh no! Send that to me ASAP, I'll take care of it for you J/K. It is fine, I have had a few massive blow offs with the big beers I brew. On the bigger ones I do now I split them into 2 5 or 6 gallon Better Bottles for primary, then combine them in secondary, keg, or bottling bucket.

You will want to keep an eye on it as it progresses, once it stops pushing through the hole, wipe it up with a sanitary cloth and then get an airlock on it. If you leave that yeast cake up there it will attract fruit flies and they can get into the beer and ruin it, or other wild yeast/bacteria can drop back in with the krausen as it falls back.

 

It's perfectly normal for this to happen when brewing a high-gravity beer with too little head space to do it's thing. Just keep the hole in the lid from getting full of dry foam and clogging up or you'll potentially blow the lid off of the bucket and have a real mess.

 

If you have some 3/8" ID tubing the standard stuff from home depot, just wet it with sanitizer, pinch it and shove it in the plug for your air lock. Then run that into a bucket or jug and clean up the krausen. I had a few close calls, and my PET carboys tend to suck my airlocks when I move them so I mostly use blow offs now. When youre done run water through the tube and soak it in a bucket of powder brewery wash or oxy-clean if youre cheap like me.

 

What a grate sight, vigorous fermentation. Make sure to keep it in the right temp range of your yeast strain.

 

what does this mean?

 

If he had used an airlock in the hole it would have filled with that krausen, clogged, and then the lid would have blown off the bucket spewing all the krausen on the walls, floors, and ceiling, as well as any furniture/equipment near it. The foil over the hole just got pushed out of the way by the krausen so nothing clogged.

 

LOL. What's the Tajik word for troll?

 

will probably look the same if you drink too much of it two months from now...
Fermcap it baby!

 

When I brew higher gravity beers (e.g., > 1.070) I always use Fermcap.

Cheers!

 

i got ya, i know the problem with the airlock, just encountered that problem...i just had a second sanitized one that i kept switching to and from. Didnt know you could just leave a piece of foil over the hole...not need to worry about contanimation?

 

Personally I just use a blow off when the krausen gets so big that it fills the airlock. Instead of an airlock in the rubber drilled stopper, I insert a piece of tubing and put the other end into a jar with water or sanitizer in it. The CO2 bubbles out of the water just like an airlock, contaminants can't go through the water into the line and back up it, and all the krausen that gets up there just runs through the line into the jar. It makes a giant airlock that doesn't clog up. Like this:



Only done foil over the top of the Better Bottle once, split a batch of Hefewiesse that I taught my wife to brew into 2 BB, foil on top, one ended up with a rip in the foil and got infected. Had a pellicle in less than 10 days of primary. Don't do foil on fermenters anymore, but that it all I use on my flask for starters.

 

Happens, if you brewed up a barley wine the SG was most likely pretty high, and the fermentation on those are usually active.

No worries, blow outs happen. I generally always use blow off tubes on my bigger beers, might be something for you to look into as well.

Cheers!

 

Type Blow off krausen or some such in You Tube....LOL

 

Clearly infected, dump asap!!!!