Beer Leaking from secondary (bottlebucket)

mvaughan06 · 02-06-2012, 02:27 AM

hey guys, i finally joined the forums after lurking for a while. i did a couple of searches and havent seen an answer for my problem.

I'm doing 3 brews at the moment so i was low on equipment and decided to use a spare bottling bucket for a secondary. I moved the batch to the bottling bucket 7 days ago, and sat it in my laundry room with the two other i'm doing. Everyday coming home through the garage i thought the laundry room really smelled like beer, just figured it was the 2 others in their primary releasing co2, no biggy.

come to find out this afternoon while transferring a brew to bottles that the one fermenting in the bottling bucket has been leaking for 7 days, slowly, out of the spigot. i had the spigot closed, and turned upright so the nozzle wasnt touching the floor. the 3 buckets were sitting on a navy blue fleece blanket, thats why i didn't see beer all over the floor, the blanket absorbed it.

looks like it ended up leaking about 1.4 gallons, which i'm really upset about because this is my Stone Arrogant Bastard clone that i've been REALLY looking forward to. i ended up siphoning the remaining 3.6 gallons into another bucket that was now brewless.

the beer looked fine, smelled fine, tasted fine, etc etc. is there anything i should be worried about? could i have ruined my beer an not realized it? it had an OG of 1.080 and before i moved it in the bottling bucket it was 1.015, so it's high on the ABV, so i'm hoping that might have deterred any bacteria from getting in there somehow. The underside of the flleece blanket was moldy...it went to the trash.

anyways, let me know your thoughts.

thanks
mike

ChrisCorley · 02-06-2012, 02:48 AM

Im new to posting but have been reading on here quite a while. Honestly I wouldn't worry about it. Other than being pissed about losing a third of your beer I think thats the worst that happened. I really dont see bacteria creeping into beer dripping out of a leaky faucet. Just dont go wringing out that blanket back back into the beer and you should be good. I am sorry for your loss.

**dkennedy** · 02-06-2012, 03:18 AM

I'm prone to agree with the previous poster- if you don't see anything funky in the new secondary, then run with it. Also does seem unlikely that anything would creep in, the steady pressure down/out and alcohol should have helped.

That really stinks, my sympathies. I considered the same multipurpose use of my bottling bucket, but luckily it started leaking slightly the first time I used it...not enough to worry about when bottling, but enough to raise an eyebrow for any long term uses.

**LuiInIdaho** · 02-06-2012, 03:26 AM

I would agree with the previous two posters -- your beer is probably fine and the worst of it is that you did not get all the beer that you wanted. Also, I periodically check my bottling bucket spigot to see that it is tight and not leaking. Mark

**mccumath** · 02-06-2012, 03:30 AM

I hate my bottling bucket for the exact same reason... Mine leaks during bottling (which is seldom unless all my kegs are full). I popped out the spigot today and noticed that there was a little piece of plastic that was left over from the molding process where the spigot rides in the valve. Cleaned that out and put it back together. Maybe it will help, I won't check until next time I bottle.

mvaughan06 · 02-06-2012, 11:31 AM

thanks for the responses guys. at least i can relax knowing that there probably isn't something wrong with the batch. sure, i lost about 1.6 gallons of brew, but there will be many more down the road. cheers!