Flaked Barley and Large Krausen

[ronniedeb]

Hi. I made the Dry Stout/"Cerveza de Malto Seca" recipe from Jamil Zainasheff's "Brewing Classic Styles" on Monday night. Calculated my WLP004 yeast starter using Mr Malty. Airlock was bubbling away within hours. Got up this morning (36 hours later) to find the Krausen coming throught the airlock onto the lid of the fermenter. I've read that Flaked Barley (the recipe had it as 25% of the grainbill), will create a big Krausen, but wasnt expecting it to fill 8.5 litres of headspace. Is this all that is at play, or is there potentially other problems?

Should I move the whole lot to anothe fermenter for sanitary reasons, or leave it as is and just replace the airlock with a clean one?

[LordEoin]

if it's dieing down now I'd probably just replace/clean the airlock and leave it alone.
25% seems like a lot of flaked barley, that's probably the cause. I only ever use a few hundred grams
What temperature are you fermenting at?

[Pheeel]

I don't have the book to hand but doing a quick search it seems that the flaked barely is meant to be 20% of the grain bill (unless I'm not reading it right):
* 7 lbs British pale ale malt
* 2 lbs flaked barley
* 1 lb roasted barley

[ronniedeb]

if it's dieing down now I'd probably just replace/clean the airlock and leave it alone.
25% seems like a lot of flaked barley, that's probably the cause. I only ever use a few hundred grams
What temperature are you fermenting at?

Thanks. I'll do that. Dont have controlled fermentation temp, but the room it's in goes between 16-20. Not ideal, I know.

[ronniedeb]

I don't have the book to hand but doing a quick search it seems that the flaked barely is meant to be 20% of the grain bill (unless I'm not reading it right):
* 7 lbs British pale ale malt
* 2 lbs flaked barley
* 1 lb roasted barley

My mistake, it was 20% of my grainbill.

[molc]

Done the same recipe before and didn't have that issue. Only difference is I used us-05, so maybe it's just an active yeast...

[nigel_c]

Get a bigger bucket or scale down the recipe a L or 2

[Bubbles]

Is this all that is at play, or is there potentially other problems?

I've done this recipe before and don't remember anything volcanic about the fermentation. I'm not sure if flaked barley is even supposed to have this effect?

The only other things I can think of is that either you massively overpitched your yeast, or you pitched/fermented at too high a temperature. If your airlock was going like the clappers after a short amount of time, it might suggest this is the issue.

[ronniedeb]

Thanks for the replies. Hopefully it will be drinkable.

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

You can defob by spraying a few shots of cool boiled water in through the top, give the spray bottle a good lash with starsan before using it.