You know you have a yeast strain that was made for top cropping (for the record: Wyeast 3944) when you ferment it at the low end of its optimum temperature range and it still makes a foamy, yeasty mess.
Next time I will try to harvest this overflow but this time I just have some cleaning to do.
I read that I should swirl the carboy around to get the yeast foam back into the beer so it will speed up the fermentation time.
If you have any other tips, leave them as a comment.
Mike
I started setting up a blowoff tube for each ferment this year after my last brew of 2011 did exactly the same thing. It sucks to clean that up then I get paranoid about contamination.
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Michael
My recommendation would be to purchase two orange universal carboy caps and then when the fermentation is in high krausen, insert a tube and allow the yeast to basically just get pushed into a smaller glass jar. Pitch as is, or make a starter. People say this method will result in an extremely vigorous fermentation and some swear by it.