I’ve taken a small hiatus from brewing until this past weekend. I managed to locate a fistful of ingredients I had laying around and pushed together, what I was hoping, is a generally lighter Ish summer wheat beer to brew for my camping trip that I’ve come to call poverty brewing. Let me tell you about half assed brewing session. It was late at night, I was tired and I think I may have cut every corner I could imagine just to get it together so I could get to bed at a reasonable time. I survived the whole session save for one thing. I forgot to attach a pressure release valve to my fermenter. In my case it was a 5-gallon keg / C02 pressure bomb.
How this C02 disaster started
I pushed through this brew session late at night, the boy was at the grandparents and my wife was asleep. I BIAB (brewed in a bag), pushed through the boil, added the hops, flavorings etc and none of it at the proper time. From there I cooled the slop to a reasonable temperature, 95 degrees, and tossed keg full of wort in the fridge to do the rest of the cool down work. Now if you are a professional brewer this whole story is probably making you cringe. Whatever, it is what it is. I woke up the next morning saw that the brew had dropped to roughly 55 degrees, threw in the yeast which would warm up as the keg warmed up and TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT IT. This was Friday night I started and around pitched the yeast Saturday morning.
The Realization
It was about Sunday I remembered that I had a keg fermenting and basically screamed “Oh Shit”. I checked the gravity before I tossed it in via my Tilt hydrometer (those things are awesome by the way) and noticed that fermentation was going in full force on Sunday afternoon. Soooo long story short I had a carbonation bomb in my kitchen. Kegs are rated for 30 PSI so it wasn’t going to get that far but it was still pretty firm at the cap. Normally I pressure ferment with a spunding valve which gradually releases the pressure but according to my calculations this pressure would basically blast the valve off or break its little plastic fittings. Had to go old school on this one.
The Release
Well shit… the only way I was only going to get around this is a bucket of sanitizer, a hose, and a gas pin lock valve if this was going to work. I gathered up around all my stuff, dug up a few fittings, and got ready for the impact. So, at 9PM at night while everyone was asleep, I decided this was a good idea. I dropped the hose in the water, pressed the pin, and BOOM HISSSSSSSS. Foam went absolutely everywhere followed by a heavy dose of krausen and then some trub for good measure. This SOB probably bubbled aggressively for about 20 minutes before it finally calmed down and laid a layer of foam around the bucket that went further than the towel, I had put down. What a friggin mess.
The Cleanup
Long story short, crap went everywhere, and fermentation is pushing through fine. Oh, and somehow, I didn’t wake anyone up! I guess this just reinforces some of my previous posts where you really shouldn’t cut corners especially the more critical ones like releasing C02 properly. I figured you might enjoy my stupid experience and help you remember what to do and what actually matters when you cut corners.
Until next time
Cheers!
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