homebrewingnoob
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Hi all,
Not quite sure where this post belongs but this topic seemed most fitting at the time. Recently my boyfriend and I have gotten in to home brewing, and have successfully completed a few batches no problem. However, the new place we're living at and the location of where we placed our fermenter may not have been ideal.
Two weeks ago we started a batch of some beer, and today went forward with bottling it. It was fermenting in a 6.5 gallon glass carboy with a three-piece airlock. We used a blow off tube going from the airlock to a bucket filled with sanitizer water. This was all placed on the ground in an outdoor stairwell that gets no light at the apartment building we live in. No issues over the two weeks until today. We siphoned the fermented beer from the carboy to a fermenter bucket to avoid taking the sediment with it, so when siphoning, once we reached the point where it was taking sediment with it from the bottom of the carboy we stopped siphoning. We then bottled our whole batch.
Now to the gross part. When I was cleaning out the carboy that had all of the sediment in it, I poured it out into my kitchen sink which has a strainer. I let this sit to try and strain away as much of the liquid to get rid of the sediment for about 15 minutes. When I came back, I saw about 4-5 dead cockroaches and other misc. floating body parts within the sediment. I've never seen roaches in our apartment, so I can only assume that they must have come from the carboy. I'm assuming that the blow-off tube may not have been submerged completely, allowing for these gross pests to enter the tube, and subsequently drown in our fermenter.
Now that we've got all these beer bottled, is it a waste? I've seen a few other posts of people finding bugs, never roaches though, within their fermented beer and all say there should be no issue with this. However, I'm assuming they entered after all our boiling processes were done, and there was quite a few of them..
What do we do? Would you guys still drink the beer? Or call this a lesson learned?
I understand that not having the blow-off tube completely submerged is stupid, but when we let it sit for those two-weeks it was. We have another batch working now, that I'm not putting in the same place, where the fermenter is off the ground, and anything open to air is now saran wrapped or covered with cheese cloth.
Help?
Thanks!
Not quite sure where this post belongs but this topic seemed most fitting at the time. Recently my boyfriend and I have gotten in to home brewing, and have successfully completed a few batches no problem. However, the new place we're living at and the location of where we placed our fermenter may not have been ideal.
Two weeks ago we started a batch of some beer, and today went forward with bottling it. It was fermenting in a 6.5 gallon glass carboy with a three-piece airlock. We used a blow off tube going from the airlock to a bucket filled with sanitizer water. This was all placed on the ground in an outdoor stairwell that gets no light at the apartment building we live in. No issues over the two weeks until today. We siphoned the fermented beer from the carboy to a fermenter bucket to avoid taking the sediment with it, so when siphoning, once we reached the point where it was taking sediment with it from the bottom of the carboy we stopped siphoning. We then bottled our whole batch.
Now to the gross part. When I was cleaning out the carboy that had all of the sediment in it, I poured it out into my kitchen sink which has a strainer. I let this sit to try and strain away as much of the liquid to get rid of the sediment for about 15 minutes. When I came back, I saw about 4-5 dead cockroaches and other misc. floating body parts within the sediment. I've never seen roaches in our apartment, so I can only assume that they must have come from the carboy. I'm assuming that the blow-off tube may not have been submerged completely, allowing for these gross pests to enter the tube, and subsequently drown in our fermenter.
Now that we've got all these beer bottled, is it a waste? I've seen a few other posts of people finding bugs, never roaches though, within their fermented beer and all say there should be no issue with this. However, I'm assuming they entered after all our boiling processes were done, and there was quite a few of them..
What do we do? Would you guys still drink the beer? Or call this a lesson learned?
I understand that not having the blow-off tube completely submerged is stupid, but when we let it sit for those two-weeks it was. We have another batch working now, that I'm not putting in the same place, where the fermenter is off the ground, and anything open to air is now saran wrapped or covered with cheese cloth.
Help?
Thanks!