Better Bottles, Blowoff tubes, and explosive diarrhea

I told my co-workers I couldn’t come in today because I had explosive diarrhea:

;D ;D ;D

I’ve read horror stories of fermentation pressures shattering glass carboys when airlocks get clogged, so I’m glad this happened in the plastic bottle. There was at least a half bottle of beer on the bottom of the freezer:

Using my lunch hour to get a blowoff tube from the LHBC…lesson learned!  ::slight_smile:

It only takes one event like this to learn the value of a blowoff tube. I had an explosion with my Russian imperial stout that I was fermenting in a bucket, blow the lid off the bucket and the fridge door open. After that any higher gravity beer I ferment in either better bottles or buckets gets a tube.

Before putting your complete trust in the better bottle check out this thread

Better bottles can break.  I think there are plenty of testimonials to that although I haven’t had one go yet.  But the plastic bottles that exploded in that thread were plastic water jugs.  I guess it’s possible a better bottle could explode rather than blowing the stopper out, but if it did you wouldn’t have shards of glass everywhere.

Plastic fermentation buckets are bigger (6.5 or 7.9 gallons), don’t take any more space in a fridge, and are really easy to clean and store.

Consider a few drops of FermCap-S (anti-foam agent) in the boil kettle and/or yeast starter. 
Boiling sanitizes the FermCap-S. 
It is fantastic in terms of preventing boil-overs or blow-off losses.  It also allows you to ferment more in the bucket (with less headspace).

It also keeps your clean up messes to a minimum and keeps the spouse more supportive of your hobby.