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I would like to try fermenting in my 6.5 gallon carboy and forgo secondary fermentation. Does anyone do this with a 6 gallon batch (or a festa brew)? Or would you lose to much out your blow off tube?

There is not that much (1lish) blow off typically.

I assume 6 gal is American and +/- 23l.

Sandy

HoweFox wrote:I would like to try fermenting in my 6.5 gallon carboy and forgo secondary fermentation. Does anyone do this with a 6 gallon batch (or a festa brew)? Or would you lose to much out your blow off tube?

I completed 2 festa kits in just the primary bucket. Came down with a cold and didn't want to chance it and left well enough alone. I think your going to get alot of blow off from your carboy going that way due to the lack of headspace.

I did it with a festa brew once and it worked great.Just stuck my racking hose in the bung and the other end in a small bucket of cleaner. No issues.

Be prepared to clean the inside of a carboy (ie flexible wire brush).

I ferment all my beer in carboys, and to clean them I just fill my carboys full of the pink clorinated cleaner and let them soak overnight, all the scum falls down with no work. I'm always paranoid about scatching the surface of my carboys with those wire brushes.

Adam

I usually stick to 21L max in my carboys, you could do more but make sure you have a good blowoff tube.

@CartoonCod - agree with you concerning the scratches. I only use one to lightly break off bits stuck to the side from when the krausen drops.

I always scale my batches to end up with 22L going into my 6.5 gallon carboys to maximize the end product of my brew day. I ferment in them exclusively. All my plastic fermentation buckets are being used for grain storage or cleaning vessels. I've had a few blow off to the point that they loose ~0.5 - 1L or so but its not very often. I think this can be controlled for the most part with proper pitching and temperature control.

A few drops of fermcap before fermentation really gets going will prevent/reduce blowoff. I still use a blowoff tube with my 6.5 gallon carboys, but haven't really needed to since I started using fermcap.

6 in a 6.5 is pushing it. I try not to go over 5.75. Big beers go even lower.

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Thought I should report back in. I had no problems doing primary only fermentation in my glass carboy with a Festa Brew (West Coast IPA) when I used Fermcap (I used 12 drops). I used a blow off tube, but lost very little beer (~1 cup).