How do commercial breweries deal with blowoff?
Bolwerk
wondering how commercial breweries deal with blow-off during a primary
fermentation. I usually just blow it through an older plastic hose I
plug into my carboy cap. My last batch caused a really impressive/cool
explosion,* and I was thinking it could be quite a safety issue if
you're dealing with batches 93x larger than the 5gal I work with. Is it
just a large-scale version of what homebrewers do, or do commercial
people tend to just let krausen sink back into the fermenting wort?
* and, since there was no contamination, not at all tragic. It was my
first explosion, actually, so I've been doing fairly well.
Bart Goddard
news:KLudnSFNd6tpI5LT...@earthlink.com:
> I've been cleaning my equipment to prepare a batch, and it got me
> wondering how commercial breweries deal with blow-off during a primary
> fermentation.
When all you do is dump cheap vodka in some yellow colored
water, blow off is not an issue.
"Oops! Too much, I guess this batch is malt liquor."
--
Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
Bolwerk
> Bolwerk<bol...@gmail.com> wrote in
> news:KLudnSFNd6tpI5LT...@earthlink.com:
>
>> I've been cleaning my equipment to prepare a batch, and it got me
>> wondering how commercial breweries deal with blow-off during a primary
>> fermentation.
>
> When all you do is dump cheap vodka in some yellow colored
> water, blow off is not an issue.
>
> "Oops! Too much, I guess this batch is malt liquor."
Eh, well, I don't really care too much about BudCoors does it. I'd be
interested to know how medium craft brewers do it.
John Bleichert
At the breweries I've visited they often simply run tubing down the
side of the fermenter into a 5 gallon bucket. Assuming a closed
fermenter. There is typically much more headspace in a conical
fermenter than there is in one of our buckets or carboys, so "foam all
over the place" is rarely an issue. As I understand it.
Some craft breweries even use anti-foaming agents in their fermenters
(and/or kettles) to keep the amount of foam as low as possible. Foam
can cut down on your brewing capacity and be a serious cleaning
problem, depending on the equipment style. Remember: in a closed
conical fermenter even top-cropping yeast is cropped at the bottom,
via the cone.
JB
--
-------------------------------------------
John Bleichert syb...@earthlink.net
The heat from below can burn your eyes out!
rgb
Bolwerk <bol...@gmail.com> wrote:
As a general rule, commercial breweries don't deal with blowoff.
Allowing the krausen to sink back into the wort has worked without
problems for centuries: no contamination, no off flavors.
It's really a home brew thing. It's not really about off flavours or
infection, but rather allows fermentation in a smaller vessel. But,
there's absolutely nothing wrong (and an awful lot right) about using a
larger vessel for primary fermentation so a blowoff system isn't
necessary.
FWIW, I've never, ever used a blowoff tube in the 15 years I've been
brewing. I know one brewer who does, and ironically, his beers have had
some infection problems over the years.
Bolwerk
Hmm, that's interesting. Is this one of the areas where people have
parted with Papazian? I was kind of biased against buckets precisely
because you couldn't easily deal with blowoff that way. He put some
emphasis on blowing off bitter hop resins.
Miles Bader
> Hmm, that's interesting. Is this one of the areas where people have
> parted with Papazian? I was kind of biased against buckets precisely
> because you couldn't easily deal with blowoff that way. He put some
> emphasis on blowing off bitter hop resins.
Wait, aren't bitter hop resins the _goal_...?
-Miles
--
Optimist, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
Steve Bonine
> Hmm, that's interesting. Is this one of the areas where people have
> parted with Papazian? I was kind of biased against buckets precisely
> because you couldn't easily deal with blowoff that way. He put some
> emphasis on blowing off bitter hop resins.
I have never noticed a difference between batches where krausen blows
off versus it sinking back into the beer. I use a blowoff tube on about
50% of my batches because generally I reuse yeast from one batch by
pouring wort over the yeast cake, and when I do this the fermentation is
often so robust that I need the blowoff tube. I only reuse yeast once,
thus the 50% number. But I've not noticed a difference in taste between
the ones with and without the blowoff tube.
Bolwerk
> Bolwerk<bol...@gmail.com> writes:
>> Hmm, that's interesting. Is this one of the areas where people have
>> parted with Papazian? I was kind of biased against buckets precisely
>> because you couldn't easily deal with blowoff that way. He put some
>> emphasis on blowing off bitter hop resins.
>
> Wait, aren't bitter hop resins the _goal_...?
^excess bitter hop resins
Also, it supposedly blows off fusel alcohols.
I mainly moved to carboys because they're easier to clean and seem to
last longer.
Bolwerk
My thinking was the particulates would probably clear out during time in
the secondary, at the very least.
I always used a blowoff hose, but more out of fear that something
wouldn't be as good if I didn't I guess. I've certainly made beers that
were awesome without one.
Scott
airlock? I thought it was used when you didn't have a lot of headspace
or vigorous fermentation so that the "head" could exit the fermenter
without plugging up. Getting a bunch of head in a three piece airlock
could gum it up to the point of not working, hence a bottle bomb (glass
carboy)....
Ecnerwal
Scott <acepilo...@bloomer.net> wrote:
In a perfect world, true. With adequate care for sanitation and things
that fit right, it's just a big airlock. In the real world, it's often
an inferior airlock, simply because things don't fit as nicely or are
cobbled together with more places for imperfect sanitation to lurk.
Plain old foam will pass right through a 3 piece with no problems (well,
it will blow the top cap and floater off if things get going fast) -
it's when you have whole leaf hops in the wort (and don't strain them
out before fermentation) that most plugging problems occur, in my
experience.
Some commercial and home brewers use products like fermcap to kill the
foam in advance.
I use a 6.5 gallon carboy for primary, and rarely feel the need to worry
about blowoff- most batches put up an inch or two of tight (small
bubbles) kreusen, then fall without issue - but every now and again some
batch decides to foam (generally big bubbles) right to the neck. I use a
3-piece, sometimes converting it temporarily (usually a day or less) to
a small-diameter blowoff by putting a hose on the riser (removing the
cap and floater), and switch to triple-bubble locks for secondaries. I
generally strain out the hops before primary so I don't have to worry
about plugging the small-bore airlock. I've never found a large-bore
tube that fits this carboy properly, but I stopped looking a long time
ago when I'd worked out my methods of dealing with it.
--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.
Steve Bonine
My answer is yes.
I use a blowoff tube only when I am afraid that the fermentation is
going to be so vigorous that my bubbler will be compromised. For me
it's not an issue of plugging up, but rather of allowing outside air
into the fermenter when the foam dissipates and there's not enough
liquid left to seal the bubbler.
A side effect is that the krausen exits the fermenter, carrying with it
all the evil components described elsewhere in the thread. I am
unconvinced that this has any effect on the quality of the beer, but
that doesn't mean that I'm correct.
Gregory Sutter
> In article <JeedneeHG52XoonT...@bright.net>,
> Scott <acepilo...@bloomer.net> wrote:
>
>> OK, now I have to ask. Isn't a blow off tube just another form of
>> airlock? I thought it was used when you didn't have a lot of headspace
>> or vigorous fermentation so that the "head" could exit the fermenter
>> without plugging up. Getting a bunch of head in a three piece airlock
>> could gum it up to the point of not working, hence a bottle bomb (glass
>> carboy)....
>
> In a perfect world, true. With adequate care for sanitation and things
> that fit right, it's just a big airlock. In the real world, it's often
> an inferior airlock, simply because things don't fit as nicely or are
> cobbled together with more places for imperfect sanitation to lurk.
>
> Plain old foam will pass right through a 3 piece with no problems (well,
> it will blow the top cap and floater off if things get going fast) -
> it's when you have whole leaf hops in the wort (and don't strain them
> out before fermentation) that most plugging problems occur, in my
> experience.
After my first batch of Belgian yeast in a high-gravity wort, with
which I blew all the water out of a little 6-chamber airlock, I
quickly began using blowoff tubes on all my fermentations. Just a
tube from the top of the bucket into a 1-gal malt extract bucket,
and a little One-Step (oxygen sanitizer) in the water of the blowoff
bucket to keep anything from growing in there. Easy to set up and
works great.
Many methods, same solution: delicious beer.
--
Gregory S. Sutter "How do I read this file?"
mailto:gsu...@zer0.org "You uudecode it."
http://zer0.org/~gsutter/ "I I I decode it?"
Kris Kart
> I've been cleaning my equipment to prepare a batch, and it got me
> wondering how commercial breweries deal with blow-off during a primary
> fermentation. I usually just blow it through an older plastic hose I
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=16058
Take a look at post no.4
Looks like a horror movie!
John Bleichert
Ugh!
Bolwerk
Ha, nice, thanks! :-D