Beer Forum

I recently brewed a Flanders red-style ale which I racked to a Better Bottle with a White Labs WLP655 Sour culture and a mixture of blackberries and raspberrie after conducting the primary in a regular plastic bucket. The problem is that the fruit seems to want to escape the bottle. Naturally, fermentation picked up a bit after the fruit was added, and the bung and the airlock has already been blown out twice in less than 12 hours. I know the most violent part of the fermentation will soon subside, but is there anything I can do to keep this from happening? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Put a blow off tube in, just run some of your tubing through the bung and into a bottle/bucket of water or stansan(or vodka). One thing I did to one of my air locks was cut off the little cross at the bottom of the tube that goes into the vessle. I've had issues that were caused by that catching material that would have normally been able to move further up the tube, causing a blowout.

Another option if the ferment is vigorous, just cover the top with some foil. As long as gas is coming out not much will be going in, the foil just keeps critters from climbing in.

Gahr wrote:I recently brewed a Flanders red-style ale which I racked to a Better Bottle with a White Labs WLP655 Sour culture and a mixture of blackberries and raspberrie after conducting the primary in a regular plastic bucket. The problem is that the fruit seems to want to escape the bottle. Naturally, fermentation picked up a bit after the fruit was added, and the bung and the airlock has already been blown out twice in less than 12 hours. I know the most violent part of the fermentation will soon subside, but is there anything I can do to keep this from happening? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Maybe it's the sort of ferment that needs a larger container. maybe a medium size poly garbage pail ?? With a larger pail you could leave the cover on and forget about the blow off issue altogether trusting that the CO2 will rise and cover everything eventually driving all the O2 from the pail .

i would try one of the bigger buckets in the wine making section of the brew shop. I think they are 8 gallons, but if the ferment is vigorous that 02 should not last long.

Thanks for your answers. I thought of using a larger container, but the thing is I want the beer to sit on the fruit for at least three months, and I'm ant to use the Better Bottle because of its low oxygen permeability (And I want to use a bung and airlock because don't want too much of the fruit carried out of through a bolw-off tube). Anyway, I added a few drops of Foam Control from Morebeer, and that actually seems to have done the trick. The foam has subsided enough to keep the fruit away from the airlock, and the ferment is going just fine.