[Wheat_Brewer]

I brewed the cheer beer Sunday morning than ran to our friends house with the wife to babysit their two girls for the evening (the saying no good deed goes unpunished came to mind).  We come back around midnight to find that in the course of about 12 hours the yeast has blown the air lock out, sprayed beer in a relatively amazing pattern, and overflowed all over the carpet.  More than a little aggravated we cleaned what we thoughts was everything up until on my drive home last night I was thinking "what happened to the airlock?!" 

I found it!  In my loft, 12 feet up!  To my amazement I looked up at the 18 foot vaulted and found a little spot on the white ceiling where the airlock had hit the ceiling and left a mess...which I then promptly cleaned up.  It's possible the airlock didn't actually hit the ceiling but beyond a doubt some beer did.

So in trying to make lemonade out of lemons, lets see you beat that!  I shot beer/the airlock 18 feet into air with yeast pitched only 12 hours earlier!!!!

[hamiltont]

Can't say I've had anything quite that exciting happen with my brewing. This is about all that comes close. It turned out to be a great Oatmeal RIS but the mess was a bit concerning...  Cheers!!!

[phillamb168]

What is cheer beer?

[tygo]

What is cheer beer?

Isn't that all beer? 

[Hokerer]

What is cheer beer?

Sounds like it might just be a "Holiday Spiced Ale" since, in a different thread, he says...

my last cheer beer had just about every spice in the cabinet and every grain you could buy

[beersk]

I've only had one airlock blowoff.  It was with WL041 Pacific Ale in a porter.  Could've believe how active that yeast was.

[denny]

Is your fermentation temp elevated?  Often times a really intense fermentation like that is caused by a high fermentation temp, which isn't great for the beer.

[majorvices]

+1. this sounds like a case of warm fermentation temp to me, possibly coupled with high pitching temp. What temp is the beer fermenting at (keeping in mind that the fermentation temp itself will be several degrees warmer than ambient) and what temp do you pitch the yeast?

[punatic]

You're not a serious homebrewer if you don't have beer stains on your ceiling.

Fruit beers will violently ferment at normal fermentation temps.  Pieces of fruit plugging up the CO2 exhaust path lead to explosive results.  

[Kit B]

You're not a serious homebrewer if you don't have beer stains on your ceiling.

+1
This has happened to me so many times, I stopped keeping track.
It's not always high temps that does it.
Basically, any time you get a good, vigorous fermentation that is able to clog your airlock, you've got the potential.
I've resorted to using blow-off tubes for probably 90% of my primaries, these days.

[tom]

You know you might be a homebrewer if...
you've mopped the ceiling.

[The Professor]

You're not a serious homebrewer if you don't have beer stains on your ceiling.

Very true, that!!!
I consider it part of the decor.

[woadwarrior]

I had a strawberry mead blow the carboy cap off for 3 days or so. Woke up Monday morning to find pinkish foam all over the carpet. Cleaned it up, put a clean cap and tube on, went to work, came home and cleaned up more foam. Rinse and repeat the next couple days. Ended up being extremely delicious without even aging it.

[Wheat_Brewer]

You're not a serious homebrewer if you don't have beer stains on your ceiling.

Very true, that!!!
I consider it part of the decor.

I'm thinking this might just be the sales pitch i use to explain to the wife why homebrewing is worth the effort and energy! 

To answer another question the yeast was pitched at 73F, i don't have a refrigerator for fermentation (hopefully Santa is reading), but with the AC on it's 70F, which i know is a little warm but i haven't had issues before.  The OG was super high though, .082, so with a good starter, high OG, and a smaller than should have been used carboy i had it coming 

[majorvices]

You're not a serious homebrewer if you don't have beer stains on your ceiling.

Very true, that!!!
I consider it part of the decor.

I'm thinking this might just be the sales pitch i use to explain to the wife why homebrewing is worth the effort and energy! 

To answer another question the yeast was pitched at 73F, i don't have a refrigerator for fermentation (hopefully Santa is reading), but with the AC on it's 70F, which i know is a little warm but i haven't had issues before.  The OG was super high though, .082, so with a good starter, high OG, and a smaller than should have been used carboy i had it coming 

I hate to break it to you but that's gonna be way too warm. 70 degree ambient means the beer might be fermenting at 78. If you pitched at 73 the temp may have never dropped down to 70 and it may even be fermenting at 80. You can add 4-8 degrees to ambient temp. You never should pitch most ales over 70 degrees and you want to keep the temp of most ales at 68 (70-72 at the very highest!) which means you need a way to have the ambient temp in the low 60s.

I understand that you say you "haven't had a problem before" but I honestly think that if you tasted you beer fermented at cooler temps you would agree with me that there is an improvement. You may even be blown away at the improvment.

You don't have to have a refrigerator, a "swamp cooler" in which you immerse the fermenter in a water batch and cycle out frozen water bottles works very well. Be sure to stick a "Fermometer" or stick on thermo on your fermenter so that you have an idea what the actual temp of the fermenting beer is. Fermentation temp is one of the most critical aspects of brewing. It is essential to consistency!

Also, if you pitch a bit cooler, say around 64-66 and keep fermentation temp between 66 and 68 for most ales you will have less issues with blow offs.