It blowed up!!!!!

[countgen]

Good morning!

Monday evening the wife and I made up five gallons of wonderfully smelling pear wine. Wednesday morning about 4:00AM, foamy wine stuff was pushing out from the airlock all over the place.
I thought I had done something wrong with the airlock so I cleaned everything up and tried again but within an hour it was pushing back up through the airlock.
Right now I've got the lid half way off and it seems to be doing okay but could anyone tell me what is happening and what I did wrong?

Thanks!

 

[cmason1957]

Sounds like you have a very active fermentation going on there. Not terribly unusual. Many folks just cover the top of the primary fermenter with a cloth, or the lid just barely on. There is plenty of CO2 coming off, to keep your wine from oxidizing. Nothing to worry about.

Oh and you did nothing wrong, sometimes they are more active than other times.

 

[Julie]

Wait until your reading is down to around 1.010 - 1.000 and either rake to a carboy and add an airlock or snap the lid down on your primary and add the airlock. When fermentation really starts off, it can be very active.

 

[countgen]

Thanks!!! Very helpful!!!

 

[Wuggs]

I'm quite new to wine making with my 6th wine almost ready to bottle so I'm still in the "try various techniques to see what I like" stage. For my first few wines I covered my primary with a clean cloth and let it ferment but I did a 3 gal batch of banana in which I snapped the lid tight and put on an airlock. I stirred it twice/day and noticed on day 3 that there was "foam" all the way up to the lid of the 7 gal bucket. It had to have been close to coming out the airlock which, BTW, was bubbling like a coffee pot percolating. I was afraid at first that something was wrong but I followed my usual policy of looking it up online and finding out that everything was OK. In the future I'm going back to the cloth or will set the lid on loosely. It's a hassle to pry the lid off twice a day and it's really not necessary to have it on tight during primary. Good luck!

 

[JohnT]

Frothing is normal and should be expected (depending on your wine).

There are a number of "anti frothing" agents out there that can help to reduce the amount of frothing you get.

Personally, I forego the use of defrothing agents and simply ensure that I have about 30 to 40% headspace in my primary. I also do open fermentation (no lid, just cover the primary with a towel) which helps.