Had no bad batches at home scale, but quite often get these events, when even replacing the lock with an open fermenter does not help. Only regular cleanups work.
This is extra notorious escapee, witbier (OG 1065) made to dump frozen berries that remain in my freezer. And my very vigorous yeast.
Yes it is quite common problem. It can be mitigated a bit by lowering the temperature.
It is fun and games until temperature controller on 2 m³ tank brakes and you have to clean foam everywhere.
Sure, but sufficiently low temperature would harm the phenolic profile madness, not something I’d do at home.
If I had an industrial fermenter, I’d probably try installing a sonicator head near the exhaust pipe orifice on the inside, coupled with gas phase, and just pop the bubbles. Like they do in waste fermenters sometimes.
I’m advocating against 100+L fermentations in general, that’s where industrial moves start to infringe on artistic part imo. Besides, local population has severe drinking problem and overcompensate, whenever I share a bottle with someone, they sometimes don’t touch it for months - I could start homebrewing daily and make more than my village can drink.
I keep returning to idea of having super local brew houses, brewpubs, but local food place owners don’t want to mess with it. National anti-drinking laws force people to drink pissbeer and cheap spirits.
You just opened up another dream life for me: designated brewer for an intentional community. If you’re giving the beer away, you can brew up to 200 gallons a year.
Nah, shipping alcohol is a nightmare. I’ve tried that, it could get criminal quickly if you are not extremely careful.
Although, why don’t we all give it another try, together?
That’s quite nice in CZ. The laws are quite a bit more preferential for smaller breweries - same requirements but lower tax. In the end it’s not that hard to make brew pub or smaller brewery.
For sending beer (not taxed and for free), I don’t have good option. It is possible but has to be correctly marked on the package, in the EU I just don’t know.
That’s a lot of foil
Just a single layer of thinnest foil to stop the light. This beer is quite light and needs this more than most, but I just wrap every fermenter that has any hops traces.
I estimated the real ecological costs at some point and it seems that they are near zero, even recycling the foil would make things worse, unless I just burn it for hydrogen. I do sometimes.
ha, I wasn’t concerned about ecological costs of the foil, though I bet you could just put an old shirt over it and have a reusable solution.
Those are quite transparent to harmful part of sunlight unfortunately. With light blocking devices, even a metal bell is less environmentally sound than foil - detergent and water to wash it occasionally have more footprint than a few meters of a few micron thick disposable aluminium.
I don’t really care about the environmental impact of aluminum foil, but maybe don’t leave your carboys sitting in the sun?
The light finds its way. Modern lighting (especially bright stuff I use for lab lighting) is less harmful than sunlight, but still harmful and broad spectrum. Compared to foil consumption on tools sterilization, this foil is nothing.


