Over the weekend I brewed beer, a Poor Richard’s Ale (a variation on my extract recipe here). Five gallons. I’ve been putting the beers in the 6½ (nearly 7) gallon carboy for the primary fermentation, under the (entirely reasonable) assumption that there’s plenty of headspace in the bigger carboy and I won’t have to worry about krausen blowing through the airlock like I would with a five gallon fermenter.

Well, I was wrong on that one.

I didn’t end up with a big mess, just a messy airlock and some dribbles—but only because I caught it in time. I swapped out the airlock with a hose-in-a-bucket setup (actually glass tubing) and then the fermentation really took off.

That was Sunday, and here it is Tuesday night and the primary fermentation is still going strong, and some foam is still percolating out. Good grief! One of the most active beers I’ve brewed in a good long while.

In case anyone’s interested, the yeast I used was Wyeast #1272, American Ale II.