Tales of another Stout
You won't need a blow off tube until you do. With 19L batches you'll be fine with an airlock most of the time but as mentioned it depends on the specifics of the batch. Anyway, as Denis says, you're not a real home brewer until you have cleaned the ceiling with a mop. Down the track, make sure to post the inevitably hilarious pictures of the batch where your airlock blocked up and in hindsight you should have used a large diameter blow off tube instead.
Anthony Wilson, on the MontreAlers mailing list
Brewing is full of challenges. Among other things, you have to deal with organic ingredients with relatively short shelf life and with qualities that varies from one harvest to the other, you need to move large volumes of hot liquid, and you have to handle sticky fluids under high pressure.
While patience is a virtue when brewing, it happens that you have to rush a batch a bit because you want it ready for a particular event. That's when being part of a club is very helpful. Experienced brewers know tricks that are not written in books and they will readily share then when you ask the right questions.
Speed carbonation is one such trick. To make of a good beer fizzy takes time; CO2 dissolves into beer but the surface area of the top of a keg is not very large and saturating a batch at serving pressure can take more than a week. One way to speed up the process is to increase both the gas pressure and the contact area, by shaking the keg while it sits horizontally. One has to be careful when doing speed carbonation because the smallest mistake can have dramatic consequences.
Just be careful that you have the line properly clamped onto the fitting before you do this. Had an accident with that myself once. But then, like Denis says, you're not a real homebrewer until you've mopped the ceiling...
Troy Needoba, on the MontreAlers mailing list
I was under the impression that I had earned enough experience to disregard those warnings while others politely manifested their scepticism. Of course, they were right.
