sanitation concern - fruit fly

Last night I notice two dead fruit flies in my airlock. I immediately removed the airlock, covered the bung hole with sanitized foil, and washed the airlock out in the sink with hot water. I then stuck the airlock into the clean keg filled with recently mixed starSan for a couple of minutes. Also note.. this is the keg that I plan on racking the beer into today.

My question is.. should I A) reclean the keg completely with PBW knowing that I didn't sterilize the airlock before throwing into the keg filled with starsan, or B) should I relax and rack into the keg as planned today and just sanitize it again.

Please advise.. I lost sleep over this.

Here's what I just posted to someone else:

It is HARRRRD to contaminate beer.

Remember that label on hand sanatizer that says it kills 99.99% of all germs and human pathogens? Guess what's the active ingredient in most hand sanatizers? Ethanol. Guess what yeast pump into your beer? Ethanol.

A 1.6% ABV solution will kill just about anything that can ruin your beer besides wild yeasts and some bacteria like lacto and brett that are perfectly fine to drink, even though they won't taste very good unless you control them.

Here's a short list of things that a 2% ABV beer would kill pretty easily. You could literally toss these in the wort (at some reasonable volume), and the beer would turn out just fine:

HIV
Sars
Flesh Eating Virus
Malaria
Bird Flu
Cholera
Hepatitis A through Z
Measles
Meningitis
Tuberculosis
Typhoid Fever
Herpes

Notice that "two fruit flies" could easily sneak onto that list.

In fact, saison/farmhouse beer in France was basically developed so that people could drink water that was contaminated with all sorts of nastiness, at the time of the black plague. They figured out that making about a 2% beer would make it potable. Beer (or alcohol at least), literally saved humankind throughout history.

Interestingly, the one thing that will jack you up that alcohol DOESN'T kill is ringworm (which is a fungus). As long as your fruitflies didn't have ringworm, you're good.

RDWHAHB!!

HIV beer? Oh boy...

To be fair, most if not all the diseases you listed are aquatic viruses; they die as soon as they come in contact with air

Or C) i am insane...

Anyhow, I was thinking acetobacter from them.. but I guess at this point in a 6% ABV it is not possible?

Also, would properly diluted starsan kill the acetobacter on a fruit fly it it was carrying it?

Using vodka or the like in your airlock may give you some peace of mind. Anything that creeps in there is instantly killed

+1 on the vodka.....I buy the really cheap stuff

I started using the cheap vodka for much sanitizing and for airlocks after reading about it here. I like to get it in glass bottles so I can reuse the glass bottle. Isopropyl alcohol actually isn't any cheaper than cheap vodka (not that I would use isopropyl in an airlock but do use it for cleaning other things sometimes).

I had one particular vodka filled airlock that for some reason I didn't notice at first and there were a good dozen of those dang fruitflies in it, pretty good size fruitflies too.

Should I reclean the keg completely with pbw because of me putting the rinsed off airlock in it, or do you the Sanitizer neutralized any aceto threat (if there was one).

I'd be willing to bet that there was no aceto threat.

RDWHAHB

Going forward if you have fruit fly problems you should be putting some vinegar(Red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, or just distilled vinegar) in a bowl/cup and then a drop or two of dish washing soap in. Fruit flies will be drawn to the fermenting smell of the vinegar and land, the soap causes the surface tension to break and they sink in and drown.

You can literally kill dozens of fruit flies in a few hours doing this.

Place a few of these of these near your foods that are causing fruit flies, so they go there and die instead of towards your fermenting beer.

Fruit flies can turn your beer into vinegar nastiness. Then again, if you use alcohol in your airlock (I use gin) then you are helping prevent that with one small step.

You'll be fine. Any time I brew with fruit (such as my recent pumpkin ale) or use a yeast that produces a lot of esters I get fruit flies in my airlock. Just be careful not to do anything to cause any suck-back, but even then I expect the beer would be ok. No need to re-clean the Star-San keg - properly mixed Star-San will have killed anything left on the airlock after you washed it.

They won't drink much.

For the record, I've used vodka, gin, and PGA in my airlocks at one time or another and the flies were always around. I have since switched over to using StarSan exclusively and I've never had any pesky fruit flies show up. If you get any suckback, those little buggies will be sanitized, and your yeast just got a little nutrient from the StarSan. Win win. Also, the gin added a really nice herbal touch to my saison when I got a little suckback. It wasn't enough to change the flavor, but it had a slight juniper aroma.