Seems excessive!!!!!

Mwh1963 · Dec 11, 2017

Hi all,
Brand new to this!!
My wine started bubbling a bit last night and this morning was over the wall and flopr in luding thick red sludge on the towels I had placed on top of FV.
I have had to remove air-lock as also bunged up with sludge.
So what am I doing wrong?!

Mwh1963 · Dec 11, 2017

PS.
Air-Lock was half filled with water as per instructions!!

Cwrw666 · Dec 11, 2017

Not enough head space. First week of wine fermentation can be a bit crazy so you need loads of headspace.

GerritT · Dec 11, 2017

Mwh1963 said:
Hi all,
Brand new to this!!
My wine started bubbling a bit last night and this morning was over the wall and flopr in luding thick red sludge on the towels I had placed on top of FV.
I have had to remove air-lock as also bunged up with sludge.
So what am I doing wrong?!

Welcome to your first blowout. Mine managed to hit the ceiling overnight, Notty it was if I recall correctly. Luckily it was ale, didn't leave much of a trace :mrgreen:

Rule of thumb (for me at least) is 25% headroom.

Mwh1963 · Dec 11, 2017

So should the wine still be OK, and I take it I should replace the air-lock?!

Dutto · Dec 11, 2017

Mwh1963 said:
So should the wine still be OK, and I take it I should replace the air-lock?!

If you have two airlocks then sanitise the second one, put water in the bend and replace the one in there; but only after you are sure that it's not still sending out foam.

If you only have the one airlock I would leave it in place for now and put some water back in the bend while I went out and bought another airlock.

In the future I would use a Blow-Off tube as per the one in the photograph.

Enjoy. :thumb: