Beer Forum

Brewed a Pliny the Elder variation this weekend, used some yeast from my brother in law (Brewmaster Brian O'Reilly from Sly Fox). This was also the first time that I REALLY aerated the wort.

Well about 2 hours after pitching the yeast, fermentation was going off like crazy. Krausen was spewing from my airlock. I pulled the airlock and rigged a temporary blow off tube, which did not fit very snug, but it worked. The next day my water jug was overflowing with foam.

My question is, what are the chances that my brew is contaminated? Also, my fermentation ran really hot, it was at about 79 during high krausen, will that impart any off flavors. Fermentation seemed to finish really quick, took about 48 hours to go from 1.076 to 1.010, so I racked it over my dry hops in the secondary. Is this too soon? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

I wouldn't worry too much about contamination... I had a belgian golden blow off the airlock, and make a mess... but there was so much shit coming out, that by the time i got the blow off tube set up and whatnot, still there wasn't much of an opportunity for anything to get in. That beer stayed clean until I kicked it 3 months later. (I noted this, because I was worried about the same thing).

Do you know what the yeast strain was from sly fox, or the WLP or Wyeast equiv.?

The only thing I would be worried about would be that super hot fermentation. 79 for an ale that isn't a belgian is definitely going to give you some higher alcohols/phenols and other shtuff you probably won't want... but you'll find out soon enough! The hops might hide a bit o that.

i have had some barleywines blow the lid off of buckets before. i actually still had hops, wort, and yeast in the rafters of my last house when I sold it! Both times the lids blew off, the beers turned out great. They have even won awards at different homebrew comps. Remeber, a beer that is fermenting that well is "blowing off" CO2 like crazy which is a positive pressure keeping bugs from crawling in. As long as you put a cover on it when it slows down you should be fine. Think of all those "open fermentations" in England and many other ale breweries in the world.

I would be worried about the high ferm temp though!