Violent foaming on my last two washes. Whats changed?

[Bobbywolf]

Like the title says my last two BWTPW's have had some massive foaming. To the point of clogging my airlock and blowing out the bung, causing... a mess.

I leave about 5" of headspace on top of my 50Gal fermenter, as always, but the last two gave me a nasty surprise.

I was under the impression that sugar washes don't generally foam much, and mine havent, up till now. Anyone experience this?

Only difference I can think of has been the yeast. Fleischmanns active dry yeast recently changed their label on the bottle. Im wonder if they changed yeast strains as well. Could this cause this sudden change in behaviour?

If nothing else, is there anything I can add to the wash to surpress the foaming?

(heads back to cleaning the barrel, floor, wall, ect... lol)

[still_stirrin]

Bobby,

What's in your ferment? Typically, an aggressive top fermenting yeast will rise and fall in the fermenting wort and sometimes it entrains solids and carries that up. Excessive foaming is often from oils or tannins (in a grain ferment) in the liquid that the yeast are attacking. Your nutrients could also be contributing to the excessive foaming.

Regardless, it is goodness to blow off this Krausen foam as it has acidic and sharp flavors in it. The aggressive activity is a good sign of a healthy ferment.

So, I usually use a blow off tube...a hose stuck in the airlock hole and run down into a bucket of water. The foam will flow through the hose and collect in the bucket as the CO2 bubbles through the water. When your activity subsides to the point when not much more foam is rising but you have an active ferment with CO2 expiration, then you can replace the airlock and let it go.

Bottomline, the high Krausen is good to see, although not too common in a sugar wash. I guess it depends on what exactly you have in the wash. And yes, different yeast strains have a tendancy to produce different levels of Krausen foam.
ss

[masonsjax]

That sounds like a good active fermentation, which is generally what you want. Do you rinse out the barrel between batches or just dump in the next generation? It could be that the yeast colony has grown to a size where they can efficiently chew up the whole batch without a slow ramp up.

If you're not using temperature control, warmer temps will be more active too. With 50 gallons, it's gonna generate some heat itself too and make things worse. If possible, you should be controlling the temp of the wash to the low end of the yeasts preferred range to get a less violent ferment and cleaner flavor profile.

At any rate, I would rig up a large blow off tube to a bucket of sanitizer or something to avoid painting the room with sticky wash.

[Bobbywolf]

Only ingredients here are water, sugar, tomato paste, lemon juice, and of course yeast.

I have a temperature controller that keeps the temps up to 29degC, however the wash heats itself for the first day or two.

Blow off tube to a bucket of water is in the works right now.

[Bobbywolf]

Here is my temporary solution till things calm down.



Thanks for the suggestion guys!

[still_stirrin]

[Bobbywolf]

24 hrs later and things have calmed down. My new routine will be using the bypass hose for the first 2 days, then switching off to the airlock and heater.

All good.