Due to all the big beers we are brewing for barrels and stout night, we have had a lot of blow offs! We need to do a major cleaning of the ferm room!
I need someone to head up an organize a clean up party this week.
We also need volunteers to help clean up.
This needs to be done before Saturday, cause we have a tour group coming thru that day.
Thanks.
Mon, Nov 10, 2014 - 4:04pm
#1
Ferm Room Clean Up!
I'm only available on Wednesday evening at 6pm, so I can organize something then, if others can join me.
Thanks, Nanc
James and I mopped up in there and took grav readings of the mop water. Beers were still blasting off when we left though.
I know occasional accidents happen but I'd like to come up with as fool proof a way as possible to prevent messes. I'll lead the charge at some point between getting back from honeymoon and baby arriving.
The brew house and ferm room together are what draw pepole into the club. I think messes in there make us look amateurish (i.e., we dont have a solid working protocol for our biggest draw) and may discourage people from fermenting (and by that token brewing) at the brewhouse.
Seems appropriate to stress pitching a good amount of healthy yeast (underpitching can cause over-stress and rapid division of cells, thus increasing the krausen) and chilling to ferm temps before pitching.
Also, a few drops of Fermcap (stored in the fridge door) go far.
There are some exceptional strains (WY3068 and 3787) as well as those high-gravity worts, but most blow-offs should be limited.
I think this also raises another point: the temp of the room itself can also be an issue. I don't know how this is regulated, but the room is getting a little warm. Remember that while the fermentation room itself is around 65 (when I checked last Friday it was reading 18.5C) but my fermenting beer was still over 70 due to the exothermic nature of fermentation. Along with all the heat of other fermentations contained in such a small, enclosed space, this can start driving the temp up also leading to the critical amount of blow-offs. I really think we need to get the temp back down in preperation of the Westy-esque beer, especially since it'll use the infamous 3787.
I went and cleaned the front part of the ferm room tonight very throughly over the past there hours. James, as I was about half way I literally saw your blowoff blow about 3ft off your carboy (scared the shit out of me). It sprayed quite a bit of krausen around the back of the room too. I cleaned it all up, but your carboy is very violent right now. We had 8 carboys (three of which were mine) that were exceptionally volitile and spilling over. There is still a quite a bit of work to do, but it is better condition now.
Here are some before and after of tonight.
Some items moved from right side, tons of spillage (this is just after I started to clean).
On back walls, from a blow off going wild. Before. There also is a small puddle forming under the back barrell.
After moving carboys and cleaning....
Cleaned shelves in front and moved all carboys on floor. PBW'd the enture front floor and cleaned bottoms of all carboys. Put back in same/close to same place. Wiped wall down on the back too (both sides of room)
Moved all carboys, wiped wall, placed all kegs in front area. Organized wall storage on right.
Moved all 1gal containers on top row along with yeast that was labeled and two that wern't. Cleaned rack and moved three ferms on second row. Boxes are now in front by the conical.
Cleaned back walls, still probably needs another pass.
Still have a bit to go before it's presentable, but I would suggest if there are "best practices" to prevent blowoff we place a sticky on the forum and introduce it into the training process. Two that blew off I know had large starters & the temp of the room seems to be relatively balanced. I know we have these happen ocassionaly, but it seems it's more common now than before.
Thanks to Rob, James and Conrad and whoever else for their efforts. I owe you guys.
Damn, thanks for all the hard work! If we need a second round, I'm available Wed and Fri evening.
Thanks Conrad!
I'm heading back tonight to just do some checkup on the brews. Brock, I would coordinate with Chuck to see if you two can meet up and get a few others to join for the back area.
Thanks, Conrad!
I might suggest we start requiring the large 1" blow off tubes for all volatile beers. I'm not sure why this is not the standard. These will never cause a mess and just fit down the neck of the carboy, no air lock bung/stopper. It may need to be wider for better bottles, but it can be purchased online cheaply.
http://forums.morebeer.com/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=32399#p333476
http://www.brewandgrow.com/brew/fermenting/blow-off-tubing/siphon-tubing...
Rob and I dropped by the brewhouse at around 6pm last night and all of our blowoffs were fine then. SOrry for the mess.
I will comment that other strains to watch out for are SO4/WY1098 and the Weihenstephaner Hefeweizen strain.
I hope/suspect mine wasn't a part of the blowoff problem, I had a little volume problem with my first brew at the brewhouse and only ended up with about 4 gallons ;) But, I will take James' suggestion about using a 1" blowoff tube to heart - that's a great idea.
Also, I want to second Kyle's thoughts about the temp in the fermentation room. If the ambient air temp is 65F, we are fermenting our beers at closer to 70F or above. That's a little warm.
www.singingboysbrewing.com
The blowoff tube is exactly why I'm conflicted about my glass carboy: I've heard enough broken-glass horror stories to instill a healthy fear of the thing, but I never worry about a blowoff mess when there's a one-inch tube coming out the top.
I have only heard of a glass carboy exploding when an airlok got filled up with blowoff crud and also was stuck in the carboy. Its why taping or straping airlocks down is a bad idea. But a 1" blowoff will never clog.