Wort Contamination Risk

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cswant88

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Hello, I am relatively new to home brewing, and brand new to this forum. This category has to do with sanitation, so I believe I am posting this question in the right place. I was brewing a 5 gallon batch of beer a little while back. I was very meticulous about my sanitation throughout the whole process. I used ice to cool my wort in my sink. Earlier that day I washed the entire sink with anti-bacterial dishsoap and a sponge. It was not used for dishes, preparation of food, or for anything else after it was cleaned. After it was cooled, I placed the pot containing the wort next to my sanitized fermentor. I removed the sanitized lid from the pot and placed it in the icy sink water. While doing this I accidentally dipped one of my fingers into the icy sink water. Upon turning to grab the wort, a drop of said sink water flew off my finger and went straight into my wort. I proceeded with the process of adding the wort to my fermentor as if nothing had happened. My beer is currently in a secondary fermentor, and it has been a couple weeks since this incident. Bottling day is fast approaching, and the fermentation process seemed to go off without a hitch. My question to any experienced home brewers out there is this; What is my contamination risk here? Is it likely that this single drop of icy sink water contained any of the bacteria that would have a negative effect on my beer? I intend to bottle and finish out this batch either way, but I just want to know my chances of ending up with some nasty beer. Any knowledgeable response is welcome. Thanks for listening.
 
More than likely you have nothing to worry about...strive to have the best sanitation possible and more than likely nothing will ever happen to your beer...now add in Murphy's Law and stuff is going to happen, but with something that little you should be fine!
 
The chance that your beer is contaminated is extremely low. It is harder to contaminate a batch than you might think. Don't worry. It sounds like your sink was really clean anyway. The yeast will out compete most things and then the alcohol will kill the rest if anything did make it in. I hate to say it but RDWHAHB.
 
Check this out - I read this when I first started out and it really calmed my nerves about possible infections. It's a great collection of stories of things falling into beer (phones, bugs, slobbery dog toys, the cat, etc.) and the beer still turned out okay. While it certainly possible to infect beer, it's pretty hearty stuff and can tolerate the occasional stuff falling in it.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/
 
Thanks for the quick response guys. I guess my beer will turn out ok after all. Like I said I proceeded with the fermentation process as if nothing had happened. I was just a little worried that all of my work and waiting would result in failure.
 
Yea I definitely wouldn't worry if I were you. I think my current batch has a flower petal that came off of a tree and fell into the fermenter as I was filling it up
 
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