Airlock full of wort

[BeachBrewer23]

Hello all,

I've been reading this forum for a couple of days now (Tons of great info here!) and decided to finally get posting.

So to get my newbie question out of the way,

I'm fermenting a hefe-weizen in a standard 7 gal. plastic bucket with a three piece airlock in place, and second day into the fermentation the air lock is full of wort. Not only that but it had over flowed a little onto the bucket lid.

My question is should I clean and replace the airlock or is it ok to leave it undisturbed until racking?

[HogieWan]

clean it - it will get clogged and the pressure will eventually pop the lid off. That kind of krausen explosion is not fun to clean up.

The positive pressure of fermentation will keep any nasties from getting to your brew, so don't worry about puling the airlock out. You may want to look into setting up a blowoff hose until it settles down.


BTW - welcome

[BeachBrewer23]

Yeah, I thought so, the Mrs would never let me hear the end of that. :D

Thanks HogieWan

[jjpm74]

If you can't do a blowoff, leave the airlock off until the activity starts to slow down.

[generalzonzo]

My last few brews have been over active and blowing out my airlock also. I have been keeping an extra one in a glass of one-step for just this occasion. You can definately find some vinyl tubing at your local hardware store that will fit inside the grommit that seats in the bucket lid. If you are really interested you can make yourself a Burton return system (i think that is what it is called) for your highly active brews. Read it in a BYO mag, not sure why one would want to do this to save a few drops of fermenting beer, especially when you are making a 5 gallon batch. Perhaps it works better returning the wort in larger batches.

[BeachBrewer23]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I just bought another airlock sterilized it and swapped them out with no problem.

generalz: Yeah I just read about the Burton system in "The Home Brewers Companion" the other day, apparently they have been using the same yeast for over 200 years!:eek: