Foaming Air Lock

[RobinW]

I put a Hefeweizen in the fermentor yesterday. Looked ok this morning but tonight it's trying to climb out of the airlock. I caught it before it jumped a bus to the casino.

Luckily I use 3 piece airlocks and managed to scrounge a piece of tubing to fit the inner pipe. It was just long enough to ubend into an icecream container with sanstar in it. I guess I'll keep my fingers crossed and check it tomorrow but it's extremely active and farting into the sanstar twice a second.

Is this normal? I had no idea.

 

[barls]

congrats its a boy

 

[YAPN]

Too early to worry about. With some yeasts a headspace of about 30% is recommended.

 

[RobinW]

Could have made a major mess in my new fermenting freezer.

20L wort in a 30L tub.
I used Wyeast 3068 in a 1litre starter from the same batch.

The tube is now full of foam.

 

[RobinW]

Settled down now and stopped spewing foam out.
It's all good.

 

[MHB]

Too early to worry about. With some yeasts a headspace of about 30% is recommended.

German brewing textbooks recommend 50% for wheat beers, 30% for lager.
They aren't allowed to use anti foam like fermcap, but if your thinking of doing a few wheats some might be a good investment, not too expensive and it works well.
Mark

 

[Zorco]

Does fermcap reduce head retention on the finished beer?