sundaybrewingco

Recipes 

First of all:

Yesterday I finished brewing an IPA... had the the floating thermometer in the brew kettle while it was chilling down in an ice bath. I hit the 85-90 degrees mark, and poured the wort in the carboy and topped it off to 5 gallons with cold water.

When I was cleaning up, I realized the top of the floating thermometer was cracked off No mercury was released, but I do not know when this happened...

My guess it might of been when I put it in the brew kettle while it was chilling. If this is the case, I may poured some broken glass shards into my carboy.

Is this batch completely 'effed? If not, what would be the best way to ensure no broken glass moves from the primary into the bottling bucket? I am guessing it will just fall down and stick in the trub and won't come through, but I am just a little nervous because I don't know when or where the thermometer broke..

HELP!

__________________
Sunday Brewing Co.
On the 7th Day, the Lord rested... We however, brew beer!
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Primary: Imperial Red
Keg: Kommon Kolsch (San Francisco Yeast)
R.I.P.: One too many...

“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” -Frank Zappa

hayabusa

Recipes 

The glass will sink and you have a few options.

- be 100% safe and ditch the batch

- rack to secondary in a few weeks and leave a healthy 1/2" or so behind, making sure your racking cane never hits the trub in the bottom and affix some sort of filter to the bottom of your racking cane (piece of a paint strainer bag for example)

- run the beer thru a filter (if you have a march pump and a filter housing)


If the beer sits long enough I think your risk is minimal, but the risk does exist and you need to determine what's right for you. I would personally only drink it if I ran it thru a filter, which is probably overkill but i'd rather err on the side of caution when there is broken glass in something I am going to drink.

good luck - let us know what you decide.

__________________
shocker brewing - two in the pale, one in the ale.

MikeG

Recipes 

I would first run it through a filter exactly as described in option #2 or #3. Look for and (carefully) find the glass in the trub afterward. I'm fairly sure the glass won't go through the filter but it's possible little slivers could get through it.

sundaybrewingco

Recipes 

Someone suggested to me that it may have broken from taking the thermometer out of the hot wort and putting it in the cold ice bath when I was ready to pour the wort into the carboy... the way the thermometer broke, looks like the rounded top just popped off...

I figured if it did crack in the kettle, it would of been more broken and shattered...

From what I remember, when I took the thermometer out of the kettle, it did not look broken at the top, and if it was... there *should* of been some brown wort inside the thermometer (which there wasnt). Does the going from too hot to too cold sound logical? I figure its a thermometer, so it should be able to handle a temperature change...

__________________
Sunday Brewing Co.
On the 7th Day, the Lord rested... We however, brew beer!
----------------------------------------------------------
Primary: Imperial Red
Keg: Kommon Kolsch (San Francisco Yeast)
R.I.P.: One too many...

“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” -Frank Zappa

hayabusa

Recipes 

Temp changes from really hot to really cold could indeed break the glass.... good luck and most of all be safe.

__________________
shocker brewing - two in the pale, one in the ale.

Saccharomyces

Recipes 

I've had those crack for no apparent reason which is why I don't use them anymore.

Racking 1/2" off the trub should do the trick.

__________________
[How to Calculate Mash Efficiency | Do I Need a Yeast Starter? | My Ghetto Fermentation Chamber | Twitter | 6 Gal. HDPE Fermenters | Slanting Yeast | No Sparge Brewing]

sundaybrewingco

Recipes 

Cool thanks for the input.. I'll let it sit for the 2 weeks, and filter it as best I can and take a look in the trub for anything left over.. Hopefully everything is OK and the thermometer broke elsewhere.

__________________
Sunday Brewing Co.
On the 7th Day, the Lord rested... We however, brew beer!
----------------------------------------------------------
Primary: Imperial Red
Keg: Kommon Kolsch (San Francisco Yeast)
R.I.P.: One too many...

“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” -Frank Zappa

viking999

Recipes 

Are you sure it's a mercury thermometer at all? You really shouldn't use a mercury thermometer in something you're going to be drinking. But mercury thermometers are very rare these days.

__________________
If you need me, I'll be out behind the woodshed pounding Grolsches.

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Primary: Maris Otter/EKG SMaSH

Bottle: Deizbeutzervet Dunkelweizen
Keg: Independence Day Strawberry Blonde
Keg: Munich/Mt. Hood SMaSH

hayabusa

Recipes 

I did not catch that in my original reply - I assumed the thermometer "shell" broke, envisioning a hydrometer w/ a thermometer inside... if the actual thermometer itself broke I would not drink that batch. It is just alcohol and dye (if its a red thermometer) but my trust in the manufacturing plants wherever they are made just isn't there... If it was just broken glass around the thermometer then my suggestions above still stand... if the actual thermometer itself broke I recommend sacrificial dumpage.

__________________
shocker brewing - two in the pale, one in the ale.

sundaybrewingco

Recipes 

Correct, it is not a mercury thermometer...

And yes, just a small part of the shell around the actual thermometer broke...

This is the thermometer I have (or had):

(sorry for the massive picture)

So, I think I should be good if only a small part of the shell broke.. What about the red stuff at the bottom of the thermometer? Is that just wax?

__________________
Sunday Brewing Co.
On the 7th Day, the Lord rested... We however, brew beer!
----------------------------------------------------------
Primary: Imperial Red
Keg: Kommon Kolsch (San Francisco Yeast)
R.I.P.: One too many...

“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” -Frank Zappa