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Factors leading to a Blow Off
I was just curious as to what will cause the fermenting wort to rise up and out of the fermentor. Besides a container that is too small, what will lead to this? High gravity beers? Particular Yeast strains? An airlock that can not handle the volume of co2 being produced?
Many factors can contribute, but most likely it's just too little headspace or too warm a temperature. The warmer temps tend to send fermentation sky rocketing and if you fill up to 6 gallons instead of 5 or 5.5, you might not have enough headspace. Usually it's not that the airlock can't handle the volume of CO2, it's just that it sometimes becomes clogged when the krausen gets so high it hits the airlock. This can result in bucket tops flying off, airlocks being fired out, and worse case scenario - exploding carboy...
DT
Wheat yeasts. I had one send a stopper and airlock over 50 feet, and spray wort all over the 10 foot ceiling.
That's pretty much awesome. 
I might be wrong (rare... not since the 70's), but I don't think it's the WORT that rises, I believe it is the krausen. Either way, I once had one of mine blow the airlock a few feet away.
This is why I almost exclusively use blow off tubes. Never worry about it again.
The clean up ain't awesome if you have to do it though!
You're right it's the krausen, I got excited remembering how I had to wander around my basement looking for the airlock.
So what exactly makes up the krausen?
There are a lot of yeast cells in krausen, as well as components from the wort. You can actually use krausen to prime your beer since it contains so many active yeast cells.
Yeast and trub in a foam build-up.
Is this event bad? I have had the lid come off my second batch for the past two days. I just keep pressing it back into place. I hope I didn't ruin my brew.
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