What will spit do to my beer?

I just bottled my first batch of brew yesterday and everything seemed to be going great until it came time to syphon it into my bottling bucket. What happened is I had never done a syphon before and had no idea what I was doing. I tried filling the hose with water, dropping one end in the beer and the other in the bucket, but I wasn't quick enough and the syphon failed. To make a long story short I left the beer end of the hose in the beer so as not to eff it up there and sucked on the hose to create the syphon. Now, I didn't want to do this but the scene quickly turned into a frenzy and I done did it. But here's the thing, I got sprayed in the face when I let go of the the hose which surprised me, and I accidently spit some beer right into my bottling bucket. I was very disappointed in myself but I'm still holding on to some hope that I haven't completly fouled my beer. It's a silly but simple mistake and I figure other people may have one way or another spit into their unfinished beer. if it makes any difference i rinsed my mouth out with water first and the beer I spit back was not in there for long. Will my whole batch be sour or could it just spice my beer up some?

It will mean more beer for you because no one will want to drink it.

I've had the same thing happen before and it's turned out just fine. Don't worry about it.

Nasty bacteria.

Make sure you tell this to everyone who wants one of your beers. As described above, more beer for you.

I'm kinda surprised no one has posted this yet, but...

Get an auto siphon - this is the best low end investment you can make for homebrewing.

Thanks for the suggestion BruDaddy. It'll go at the top of my list of Brewing Needs.

Just call it Backwash brew and enjoy it.

It depends upon whose spit it is...

This is a funny thread here. Reminds me of the time that I was brewing with a friend. he had his 4yr old daughter over to my house and she had a cold. We were just about ready to pitch yeast when the daughter came in and did a big sneeze right into the cooled wort.

We called it Samantha's wicked sick ale. It was one of our best brews yet.

In ancient times, spit was used to add enzymes to the mash to convert starches to sugars. Seriously.

Caveman ale...sounds like fun!

I use a turkey baster with the bulb removed as a mouthpiece. Stick it in the siphon tube and suck on it. The flow starts very easily. Then just pull the mouthpiece out. It's cheaper than an auto-siphon and WAY easier than that stupid tube-full-of-water trick.

BruDaddy said:

I'm kinda surprised no one has posted this yet, but...

Get an auto siphon - this is the best low end investment you can make for homebrewing.

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+1 on the auto siphon.

makes botteling enjoyable

That'll teach you to gargle with vodka before you siphon!

ThinkinDavid said:

I got sprayed in the face when I let go of the the hose which surprised me, and I accidently spit some beer right into my bottling bucket.

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Thanks for the chuckle, you made me spit some beer myself... May have to change your name tho.......

It may be fine or you may have an infection. Let us know how she turns out.

Did you stop siphoning and pour out the spit beer, sanitize and start over or did you just rack right on to it?

At this point I'm not too worried, no one has really given me an indication that I should be. It seems to be more of a gimmick than anything, but Ill let you know. Anyway, I didn't pour the spit beer out because it had my sugar mix in there and I didn't have enough for another batch.

If your beer turns out great, you may just have to add a little "yeast nutrient" in every batch. You need to add "The beer with that little something extra." to your label.

Hey, spit happens!

Actually, it sounds eerily similar to my first bottling experience. I immediately stopped the siphon and rinsed out the bucket and somehow got it going again into a clean pail. Only later did I realize that the fermented beer was almost certainly up to the task of knocking off such wimpy bacteria as that.

And lastly, don't put an auto-siphon on a list, just go buy it. It's better than sliced bread. It's the only product you will ever need.

Jim

nebben said:

In ancient times, spit was used to add enzymes to the mash to convert starches to sugars. Seriously.

Caveman ale...sounds like fun!

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Chicha beer!

gimmebeer said:

It's the only product you will ever need.

Jim

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Are you a Tom Waits fan? Step right uuuuupp....

My Buddy wanted to start home brewing so he stopped over to help and check out the process. His wife was working so he brought over the baby. Two guys drinking beer, brewing beer; what could go wrong? You see where this is going don't you...

Well, he was holding the baby, leaned over the wort after a serious hop addition, and let's say the baby's tummy wasn't up to the task.

If it wasn't for our cat-like reflexes and beer preservation instincts, the whole batch would have been ruined. Thank God for tile floors. All of his batches are now from the Baby Barf Brewery.

I'm sure it will be fine. I did the same thing on my first couple of brews, prior to buying an auto siphon. I was accustomed to siphoning gasoline and not beer, so my first reaction when I got a mouth full of beer was to spit it out. Well, I spit it directly into the bottling bucket. No harm done though. Both batches turned out great! I bought an auto siphon for $13.00 and think it was well worth the investment.

Chicha = Chewed corn spit into fermentor. Mmmm MMMM GOOD!

Makeyermark said:

I'm sure it will be fine. I did the same thing on my first couple of brews, prior to buying an auto siphon. I was accustomed to siphoning gasoline and not beer, so my first reaction when I got a mouth full of beer was to spit it out. Well, I spit it directly into the bottling bucket. No harm done though. Both batches turned out great! I bought an auto siphon for $13.00 and think it was well worth the investment.

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Disclaimer: I have only brewed twice now

I'm having trouble understanding why siphoning is so difficult without an autosiphon. You're creating a vacuum that forces the higher reservoir to drain into the lower reservoir, so as long as you have the bucket/carboy that you're siphoning from at a higher level than the bucket/carboy you're siphoning to, the liquid just flows. The only trick is to get it started, which I have seen posted with various methods.

Call me crazy, but I kind of rather enjoy siphoning and I don't use an autosiphon. I would think it would just be one more thing to try to sanitize. Maybe I just haven't had that bad experience to make me need one yet

its not that difficult to start a siphon but allot of people just have problems. no big deal. were you moving from carboy to bucket? if so get some caps. use a little extra racking tube and put it into the second hole and blow other way is to get a tee cut the racking tube and insert the tee. or buy an auto-syphon.

knappster said:

Disclaimer: I have only brewed twice now

I'm having trouble understanding why siphoning is so difficult without an autosiphon. You're creating a vacuum that forces the higher reservoir to drain into the lower reservoir, so as long as you have the bucket/carboy that you're siphoning from at a higher level than the bucket/carboy you're siphoning to, the liquid just flows. The only trick is to get it started, which I have seen posted with various methods.

Call me crazy, but I kind of rather enjoy siphoning and I don't use an autosiphon. I would think it would just be one more thing to try to sanitize. Maybe I just haven't had that bad experience to make me need one yet

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Yo knappster,
So what method do you use?
The method that I see recommended a lot is the fill-the-tube-with-water method which I tried several times and found to be an unnecessarily complicated and, frankly, stupid method. As I mentioned earlier, I simply use a turkey baster with the bulb removed as a mouthpiece so I'm not putting the siphon tube in my mouth. I have also successfully wrapped my hand tightly around the tube leaving the end recessed enough that my lips don't touch the tube, but it takes quite a bit more suction to get the flow started.

pen25 said:

its not that difficult to start a siphon but allot of people just have problems. no big deal. were you moving from carboy to bucket? if so get some caps. use a little extra racking tube and put it into the second hole and blow other way is to get a tee cut the racking tube and insert the tee. or buy an auto-syphon.

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So, what is this tee method all about? I can't picture that. How dat works, man?

Probably you're fine. I started my first few batches by sucking on the hose and NONE of them were infected. That said, there's lots of beer hungry bacteria in your mouth, and it wouldn't be SHOCKING if you developed an infection. Store your bottles in as cool a place as you can in order to prevent bacteria growth, and try to drink them quick. Shouldn't be a real problem for you.

Minky said:

So, what is this tee method all about? I can't picture that. How dat works, man?

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https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/flyguys-t-siphon-3-replacement-autosiphon-25774/

Minky said:

Yo knappster,
So what method do you use?
The method that I see recommended a lot is the fill-the-tube-with-water method which I tried several times and found to be an unnecessarily complicated and, frankly, stupid method. As I mentioned earlier, I simply use a turkey baster with the bulb removed as a mouthpiece so I'm not putting the siphon tube in my mouth. I have also successfully wrapped my hand tightly around the tube leaving the end recessed enough that my lips don't touch the tube, but it takes quite a bit more suction to get the flow started.

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I've used my mouth and I have used the fill the hose with water method. When I fill it with water I put the racking hose in a star san solution and siphon it into an empty bucket to start with. Then I put my finger over the hose to keep the vacuum, move the racking cane to the fermentation bucket, let the siphon go until beer starts to come out, then move the hose to the bottling bucket.

The nice thing about that method is it sanitizes the hose as you start it. I suppose you could do the same with the autosiphon, and I'm sure it's really cool, but I just haven't felt like I really needed one yet.

Why would you spit out beer? I agree with the take a shot before method

I finally shelled out for an auto-siphon. I needed some extract that my LHBS didn't stock, so I was buying online anyway, and NB ships the whole package for $7.99 - that means I have every incentive to stock up on what I need all in one order.

The auto siphone was $8. That's the same amount I pay for a specialty yeast. It's substantially less than extract. It's about the cost of hops in a decent IPA. If you're using adjuncts or addatives, it's comparable.

I'm a guy who's been happy with the "fill-the-tube-with-water" for years, but this thread is three pages long, and therefore WAY too many people are having trouble with that technique. Equipment is just as important as ingredients and technique.

Lactobacillus lives in the human mouth. They make jelly rope, I think. I imagine toadspawn when I read this.

However, yeast secrete a poison that stops bacteria from reproducing. They're greedy buggers and refuse to share wort with anyone else. Then the alcohol kills anything that the hop acids didn't. Then they suck up their poison.

Only if there is a generous innoculation of bacteria or something wildly virulent, then it can compete with the yeast.

That's how I understand the infection thing.

When you get your autosiphon, wash it in cool water. I washed mine in hot water and that ruined it. I've never been able to siphon anything with it, and I paid 25 dollars for mine. I've developed my own byzantine siphoning method that is effective 90% of the time.

Every time I get the boil rolling and I'm leaning over watching it, I have the temptation to spit in it.

I have a mini battle in my head, like the angel and devil on each shoulder... it won't do any harm.... but why do it?

One of these days I'm just going to snort up a fat one in there.

IIRC, JP's caption under this photo in the print version of How to Brew notes that the slide was taken from wort that was spit in to:

http://www.howtobrew.com/images/f17.sm.jpg

Not to disagree and say you're beer is ruined or anything, this is just the first thing I thought of when I read the thread title.

tprokop said:

http://www.howtobrew.com/images/f17.sm.jpg

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D@mn, that looks nasty...

At this point I'm not too worried about it. I posted this to see if anyone would give me any reason to worry and it just showed that none of you have any idea what backwash will do to half fermented beer. The few people with a relevant reply all said not to worry, and I appreciate it. If there are any bacteria from the incident I hope it is flavorful. As long as it doesn't taste like laundry I'll drink it. I'm going to call it "Jack Spit Ale" and explain the name to no one since everyone here gave me so much ****. I'll find out soon how it turns out. This was my first batch so a little spit in my bucket isn't my only fear.

But on another note, siphoning appears to be an important procedure which can easily be taken for granted. If the water-in-the-hose trick works for you then I have no scruples, but it turned out to be a complete load of crap for me. Don't use your mouth, that’s pointless. I've already bought an auto-siphon; it got some good endorsements and seems like a handy tool for the project. As long as the beer tastes good, which is what I've been trying to say.

...and to anyone who gives a damn the beer turned out fine. It was an Amber.

Yay! Good beer! I just found this thread tonite. Don't worry about the crap. Most of us are half drunk anyway. I am glad you got an autosiphon 'cuz I love mine. I went my first year without one and didn't get one until I broke my original siphon that came with my starter kit. I love it every time I use it.

Glad you made good beer. Welcome to the hobby. Welcome to HomeBrewTalk & welcome to the addiction.

Thanks buddy

I don't think anyone was giving you crap dude, just a hard time which is normal around here

ThinkinDavid said:

and it just showed that none of you have any idea what backwash will do to half fermented beer.

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It was fully fermented at that point... and don't be a dick