Just brewed this three days ago and we're off to a raucous start. The kit and instructions are all good. I used a can of NB's Fast Pitch + 16oz spring water as a starter for two packs of safale-04 24 hours in advance. I aerated by pouring big splashy pours between two buckets 10 times, which created plenty of head even before the pitch. Dumped the starter into my primary fermenter bucket and snapped the lid on tight. Set up the air lock and then parked the 6 gal bucket in my fermenter fridge set @68 degF. Next morning about 8 hours later the air lock was screaming and the lid to the fermenter was bulging upward but still well fastened. Went out for a just a few hours, came back to check on things, noticed the fridge door was open and when I looked inside there was a HUGE mess! The whole interior of my Monkey Wards fermenter fridge had been stoutly and imperially SHEEE-LLACKED. My fermenter couldn't hold it! The lid was blown clear off of the bucket. The rubber seal was even blown out of the lid and that thing situates very tightly within the lid itself. Krausen was everywhere but still billowing out of the open pail too. I reassembled the fermenter, cleaned everything up and then baby sat this thing for the next 10 hours waiting for fermentation to slow down--hopefully! Even after all that the fermentation remained nearly violent. I wasn't comfortable snapping the lid all the way back on yet and let the krausen belch and ooze out the side at top and into the kitchen sink so as not to rely on the air lock alone lest we repeat the calamity. Pretty sure the copious quantities of krausen jammed up the air lock resulting in the detonation of this yeast laden petard of imperial stout. My buddy who's way more experienced at brewing than I was very impressed with the pictures I shared and asked what my pitch rate and head space was leading up to this event? My reply: apparently plenty for the pitch and not enough for the space. I'm 48 hours out now. The lid is back on the fermenter, which is back in the fridge. The air lock is still bubbling quite actively but no where near the rate it was running at even this morning and is clear--the krausen presumed to have receded within enough. The expected O.G. was 1.086 and that's what I measured. I'm gonna let this ferment for the extended time frames called for in the instructions, which means I won't have it on tap (I keg) until April. Hoping it didn't get skunked through all this and still hoping for a really BIG beer in the end. If it works out I would certainly do this again but I'd work out a more industrial strength air lock system probably something using garden hose dimensions so as to get through the -robust- immediate post-pitch... fire watch!
pjg
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