1/2 - 1 Gallon of Blowoff Water Sucked into Carboy

Hey guys,

I've read a few articles where people people who experienced the same thing suggested that their beer was infected and others where things were fine. That said, I didn't notice any thread where this high volume of water was sucked back into the carboy.

So, I allowed my stout to stay in the primary for over a month and I just noticed that about a gallon of blowoff water was sucked into the carboy. I pulled a sample and it tastes fine. Should I still proceed to bottling or are my efforts futile at this point?

Thanks

How often have you looked at the water level? Are you sure it isn't evaporation? The suck back should only occur if there was a temperature drop in the carboy.

John_FL said:

How often have you looked at the water level? Are you sure it isn't evaporation? The suck back should only occur if there was a temperature drop in the carboy.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I can't imagine that you could draw enough of a vacuum to pull that much liquid....unless your blow off is higher than the carboy and a siphon was created.

The weather changed dramatically over the past few weeks. The blow off was at the same level as the carboy (flat on the floor).

The blowoff was sanitizer right? You call it water but I assume that's not really what you meant. Might as well bottle no matter what the final resting place of the solution is. No reason to dump beer that most likely is fine.

Is your carboy level higher proving that the Starsan was sucked back? I would not give up on your beer at any rate.

I only put about a cup of Starsan in my blow off catch vessel. I have never had any suck back in any weather conditions.

John_FL said:

The blowoff was sanitizer right? You call it water but I assume that's not really what you meant. Might as well bottle no matter what the final resting place of the solution is. No reason to dump beer that most likely is fine.

Click to expand...

There may have been a tad bit of starsan in there, mostly tap water.

kh54s10 said:

Is your carboy level higher proving that the Starsan was sucked back? I would not give up on your beer at any rate.

I only put about a cup of Starsan in my blow off catch vessel. I have never had any suck back in any weather conditions.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I just bottled it. We'll see what happens.

I just use cheap vodka in the bowl in case it pulls back. Never seen one pull that much unless it dropped 30 degrees

This happened to me last night when I cold crashed my beer to 34 degrees. Check out the photo...looks like a black and tan but sanitizer, IPA, Trub/Yeast. I racked the IPA into the secondary leaving the sanitizer layer alone and leaving quarter of an inch of IPA behind in the primary. Smells like a hop bomb so I think I'm good and it tastes great.



Beer line was clear IPA