Explosions!

Well it didn't take long for things to happen. Last night I went to check on my most recent brew. However, upon opening the door I saw what looked like a bomb explosion in my closet. The airlock had flow off as well fermentor lid. Apparently the yeast was quite angry! A look at the destruction below.

The lid was actually blown off it (I put it back on temporarily to prevent the likelihood of contamination)

The closet door, which could possibly be considered art now, signed by 'yeast'

Some of the content which overflowed everywhere; essentially mushy malt

The airlock, which couldn't hold back everything, and flow off along with the fermenter top

Now something similar happened to me before when I was brewing an ESB (extra special bitter). During the first few days, the beer rose and clogged airlock, which eventually blew off due to the pressure. It sat in such a state for several weeks actually before I went down to the basement to look at it.

I decided to let it finish brewing hoping that it had not become contaminated. After reading around a bit, it seemed there was a high chance that the layer of carbon-dioxide being produced by the fermentation would prevent any contamination. Plus my thought was 'beer never gave up on me, so I'm not gonna give up on beer!' In the end it turned out to be a great brew, which a lot of people liked.  Plus it pretty much named itself in the process as Explosively Special Beer.

The ESB's airlock clogged with hops

The ESB's dried risen hops, up to the level of the airlock's former location

From my ESB experience, I learned quite a bit actually. First of all, I probably didn't leave enough air at the top of the carboy. Secondly, using a glass carboy for primary fermentation may not have been the best decision. In the case that a glass carboy is used, something called a 'blowoff tube' setup would actually be preferable to a standard airlock. Having learned these two thing, I figured that I'd stay away from glass carboys for primary fermentation and would be fine.

However, apparently that's not the case as my closet will testify. If you take a look at my last post, you can see the ingredients used in the current batch, which is quite possibly one of the main reasons I'm cleaning up a giant mess right now. I have a few other thoughts as well, but will research it a bit more and share my conclusions next post.

Either way, I put a different lid back on the fermentor (since the old one was messy and actually had the rubber lining blown out of it too) and since then the airlock has been bubbling rapidly still, so the yeast is still busy at work!