Help - my stout is foaming & overpowering airlock

[peterlonz]

I have just put down a 23 litre brew with 3.4 Kg of stout malt.
Actually it comprises two 1.7 Kg Coopers Stoat beer kits, this is an old favourite of mine, it ends up very close to Guinness.
I pitched two yeast sachets at 26 Deg C & after 4 hours saw activity commence.
After an overnight sleep, I arose to find 22 hours after the pitch, my brew was spewing foam out the airlock & creating quite a mess on the floor etc. I guess the overnight temp had fallen to around 22 - 24 Deg C.
I live in Queensland Australia & I have put off till now brewing this stout because in summer it's been even worse!
BTW at the same time I put down a Pale ale with pilsner yeast which is behaving normally (it took about 2 hours longer to commence activity).

I have some obvious remedies:
Use the air conditioner.
Brew in two fermentors to allow much greater head space.
Wait till the temp falls to winter levels of 16 - 20 Deg C.
Brew with fermentor immersed in water with evaporative cooling provision - IE wet towels draped over.

Right now I have attempted to control by immersing the fermentor in a large plastic "garden bucket"& surrounding with chilled water. I used about 10 litres at about 5 Deg C.
Well it's taken about 2 hours, but I think I can replace the air lock now even though room temp has now climbed to 28 Deg C!!
I guess I can expect a slow resumption of prior activity, but I am not concerned about infection because nothing could compete with this yeast.

I do not know if all the lost foam contained ingredients which would otherwise be vital in allowing a good head to form, but stout is normally foamy anyway.

So please any practical ideas; I need a workable solution.
Thanks.

[warra48]

As I see it your problems are:
1. Too high a fermentation temperature.
2. Probably some overpitching by using two packets of yeast. The quick takeoff tends to indicate minimal growth phase before it set off fermention.

How do you solve this? Well, you've outlined a number of budget options for temperature control, all of which will help to a degree. I believe the ideal is a brewing fridge with a controller such as a TempMate.
Nothing wrong with pitching two packets of yeast in a toucan brew, but you need to control the temperature.

As for the spillage, just take off the lid, and cover the fermenter with clingwrap. Then clean up the lid and airlock, re-sanitise it all, and replace on the fermenter. Clean up the outside of the fermenter as best you can at this stage.

Alternatively, I use a couple of layers of clingwrap instead of a lid, and secure it with the seal from the fermenter lid. Haven't used an airlock for years!

Your brew will be fine, don't fret over what you've lost through the airlock. It will continue fermenting as it is.
As an aside, I brewed a Dunkelweizenbock 2 or 3 years ago with harvested yeastcake of WY3068, and it spewed through the blowoff tube, filled the blowoff bottle, made a mess of the fermenting fridge, spilled out from the fridge, and found it's way across 5 or 6 metres of the garage floor. Wasn't a real lot of fun cleaning it up, but the brew turned out fine.