Re: BlowOff - June, 2005

Al, Speaking of blow-off, I had a little adventure with a couple blow-off tubes yesterday. Rick Larson and I brewed on Saturday -- 9 Gals Kingator first runnings (1.072), 17 Gals 2-penny Pils (1.048) second runnings. We put the Kingator in cornies previously used for a Vienna fermentation, and put the 2PP in clean cornies with built up yeast harvested from the transfer of the Vienna from primary to secondary. Aerated with pure O2, then brought up to 10+psi so lids would seal on the cornies for transport back to Minneapolis with pure O2. Normally, there is a 12 - 24 hour lag period before vigorous fermentation begins, so I put them in my cold box at 50F and did not put on blow off tubes, as I didn't want the seal to break and risk possible airborne infection (OK, my girlfriend wanted to go out to eat and it was already 8p and I hadn't showered, yet, and had to get cleaned up, and didn't have time to hook up 7 blow off tubes). Yesterday when I went to hook up the blow off tubes, I set a gallon jar of iodophor on the floor of cold box, stuck one end of the blow off tube in the solution, and began to attached the gas quick connect. KABOOM! There was iodophor and wort foam hitting the ceiling and making a general mess. I yanked the quick connect off and tried to ease it on to bleed off the pressure, but it kept foaming. I grabbed a PET bottle to see if I was really losing wort, and sure enough, I was. I needed a better solution. Kingator wort is precious. One of the 2PP kegs had only 2+ Gals of wort in it. So I hooked up a blow off tube with gas quick connect on one end and liquid on the other. I hooked another gas quick connect blow off tube to the 2PP keg, then attached the liquid connect, then finally to the gas on the Kingator keg. It foamed, but this time, the foam was collected in the 2PP wort, and just pure gas (presumably CO2) was coming out of the 2PP keg. I repeated this setup with the second Kingator keg with success. After the foaming had subsided, I removed the liquid quick connect, and placed the open tube in the iodophor solution. The 2PP kegs were uneventful when I attached the blow off tubes. 26 Gallons of wort, happily fermenting at 47F right now. Andrew --- "aboyce(a)mn.rr.com" <aboyce(a)mn.rr.com> wrote: