Second day of fermentaion and my carboy spewed foam into my airlock, now what??? I removed the plastic top cap from the airlock and placed a papertowel with sanitizer to help with the euptions… Any advise?? I dont want to lose a 5 gal batch! Thanks
This has happened to us all. No problem. If you can, rig a blowoff tube–something that will cap the top and a tube that will direct the foam into a container. If you can’t then put a bowl or something over the top so that when high krausen subsides it will prevent contamination by floaties. Then just arrange towels to keep the mess at a minimum.
Regardless your batch isn’t ruined. Temperature control or a pre-employed blowoff tube will prevent this in the future. The worst that will occur is if you are fermenting it too warm you will get fusel alcohols. If you can age the beer a bit this will be minimized.
Bottom line: don’t worry. Just manage the mess.
Thank you!! Very much appreciated! CHEERS!
Learn the lesson of the blowoff tube now before your next batch gets even more vigorous and blows out the cap and sprays krausen all over the ceiling. It’s not easy to get beer out of white paint.
+1 to blow-off hose. I leave my airlock (3-piece) in place, remove the cap and inner bulb, and snug a length of wide sanitized tubing right onto the little protusion inside the airlock. Run the long tubing into a growler of santizer and you are all set. Just be sure to remove it and put an airlock back on when the foam subsides.
Yep. I use a blowoff for all beers. A quick and easy fix for this beer is to loosely cup a piece of sanitized foil over the carboy opening. Once primary fermentation is complete, put the airlock back on.
Oh, man, you’re not kidding. Twice (twice!) in the nineties while brewing at my parents’ I failed to strain out some hops. Blowout hose clogged and I painted the entire room with beer. My mom still complains 20 years later.
Yep, been there, done it. One of my first batches (early '90s) I brewed a honey porter - 5 gallons in a 5 gallon bucket. No blowoff tube. White ceiling (not for long). I learned a lot in that batch. 
Reminds me of the stories of those that fermented in their closets and wound up with a whole lot of laundry to do:)
Yeah, unfortunately this happened in a closet. Sometimes I have to learn the hard way. ;D
You quickly learn that an Airlock is just a really cool thing that you get to see working for a short time before having to throw on a blow off… After brewing for awhile, you’ll just throw a blow off on every beer and be done with it. 
I haven’t used a blowoff in quite a while, but I have a 7G Brew Bucket and I typically only have 5.5 to 5.75G of liquid. When I was using buckets and carboys I made a few messes as well.
Through several different blowoff, fermentor and other configurations, headspace and temperature seemed to be the big deciding factors in whether or not I would need a blowoff tube.
I’m happy to say that now that I have some larger fermenters, a 7.9g Speidel and a 7.9g stainless “Vessel”, my 5.5-6 gallon batches really don’t need blowoff tubes anymore. I am sure I will run into a yeast/fermentation that makes me change my mind, but very happy right now. I got really tired of trying to keep the larger tubes cleaned, dried, sanitary between uses and mainly switched to the aforementioned 3 piece airlock conversion to small diameter blow off tube and was much happier
I use 6.5-7 gallon carboys and really only install a blow-off when using top-cropping strains (WY 2565, WY 3787, Yorkshire, etc).
What temperature is it fermenting at?
Cooling it down may help if it is above the desired temp.
