Help I broke my thermometer in my brew

I was brewing and my thermometer broke. It was a glass thermometer with the red liquid inside as well as some small metal balls. Does anyone know if the brew will be ok to drink or should I throw it out? I got all of the glass and metal balls out through the strainer. Please help!!!

That's no good.

Others here have done the same thing, and IIRC, they dumped the batch because they simply were not willing to assume the risk of possibly ingesting glass shards and tearing their internal organs up. You said you strained out "all" of the glass, but I dunno how sure you can be. When you transfer to your carboy/bucket, did you strain it through a fine screen-funnel? IMHO, that would catch even the smallest shards of glass, and I'd feel confident then. What method did you use to strain? How fine was the screen? The red liquid shouldn't hurt it...but the glass is what you need to be concerned about.

Yikes! You never know if there are tiny glass shards still in there. *Maybe* if you passed it through a .5 micron filter a couple times it might be safe to drink, but other than that I'd dump it out. The last thing you need is a shredded throat, or worse yet a guest with a shredded throat.

Plus those things usually have mercury in them and that is very poisonous.

This happened in my pot and then I used the screen that I use to strain my hops. The screen is pretty small. Wouldn't all the glass fall to the bottom of the fermenter and when I rack it off to the secondary and then to a keg all of the glass would be left behind? The thermometer didn't shatter, it broke at the bottom of the thermometer, is this still a concern? I would hate to dump it if it doesn't need to be.

paranode said:

Plus those things usually have mercury in them and that is very poisonous.

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However, a lot of thermometers also use colored alcohol in place of mercury.

A mercury thermometer is hard to these days.

IBENAK said:

This happened in my pot and then I used the screen that I use to strain my hops. The screen is pretty small. Wouldn't all the glass fall to the bottom of the fermenter and when I rack it off to the secondary and then to a keg all of the glass would be left behind? The thermometer didn't shatter, it broke at the bottom of the thermometer, is this still a concern? I would hate to dump it if it doesn't need to be.

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But when you're racking, you're siphoning off the bottom. It would be easy for a glass shard that was sitting on the yeast cake to get sucked up into the siphon.

I suppose you might be able to rig up some sort of sponge to act as a physical filter on the output end of the siphon. But there's two issues with that: 1) you might be splashing the beer and aerating it again (which you generally don't want to do once fermentation has begun), and 2) sanitizing a sponge is notoriously difficult.

paranode said:

Plus those things usually have mercury in them and that is very poisonous.

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If the indicating fluid was red, it was likely a colored alcohol, and it was definitely not mercury. There probably isn't much risk in consuming the now diluted, tiny amount of fluid that made it into your batch. Like others have said, though, you probably ought to filter the beer with something finer than a strainer before bottling.

If I were you, I'd leave it go for a while to make sure everything has settled out. When you rack to secondary or bottling bucket, hold the racking tip well up above the bottom the entire time and leave a good gallon in the bottom. I'd drink it.

This is like deja vu all over again.
It's a tough call. I'd hate to dump a good batch but I'd also hate to swallow shards of glass. Maybe if you pour each glass thru a fine paint filter or something like that.

DUMP.

Cost of a new brew: $40. Risk outweighs the benefits. If it worth shredding your esophagus and stomach for a $40 savings?

Cheesefood said:

DUMP.

Cost of a new brew: $40. Risk outweighs the benefits. If it worth shredding your esophagus and stomach for a $40 savings?

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Especially if you haven't invested any time, well more than brewing it. If it was a lager that you had been cold conditioning for 6 months then heroic measures might be in order.

Thanks for all the input. I think I will dump it. Once again thanks.

IBENAK said:

Thanks for all the input. I think I will dump it. Once again thanks.

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Good choice my man. Just not worth the risk.

Thalon said:

sanitizing a sponge is notoriously difficult.

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Au Contraire... Saturate your sponge and place it in a coffee mug with about 1" of water. Put the whole thing in the nuke for 2 minutes. Done.

Important: DO NOT wring out the sponge for about 30 minutes unless you like 3rd degree burns...

As for the brew, I'd filter it through a coffee filter or good cheesecloth. Anything that passes through that is microscopic. Please note that the metal beads may be lead.

$40 for one brew? ouch

bluesfndr9 said:

$40 for one brew? ouch

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If you go with an extract kit, that's $30-$40 right there.

Been there done that. That's why I now use a digital thermometer. After my thermometer broke I got the glass out, tested the metal balls and I ended up drinking mine with no problem.

Here the deal. Red thermometer is an alcohol type like others have stated, but it is poisonous alcohol not ethyl alcohol so if you broke that part I would dump it.

Metal pellets in the glass enclosure are most likely steel not lead. For a way to tell use a magnet if the magnet picks up the balls they are steel.

the tiny amount of methyl alcohol in that thermometer is not very worrysome, espicailly if it happened prior to or during the boiling process. Alcohol boils off much lower temp than water. If you boiled the wort at all after the thermometer broke, odds are, 99% of that stuff is gone.

I wouldn't worry about the red stuff (colored alcohol) but I think the risk of potentially ingesting a glass shard (however small the shard or remote the possibility) outweighs the want to save the beer. I'd dump it. You can always brew another batch some other time.

I have had that happen twice. The first time I dumped the batch, the second one I went ahead and poured it through a funnel with a fine mesh screen. It turned out ok.

I'd dump it. Some things just aren't worth it. Go buy a digital probe thermometer for $15 at Wal-Mart so this doesn't happen to you again.

I would just dump the batch. I wouldn't screw with broken Glass in my body.


I am a retired Correctional Officer, and one of the ways that an inmate can kill another is to add some FINE Shards of glass to his food. The inmate that eats the food dies a slow and painful death. So, yuh, No Glass for this cat.:cross: