Stirred by brew before I bottled

Hi all,

I am fairly new to brewing and made the jump from beer kits to part grain (this is my first part grain and 5th brew in total). I left my amber larger brew in the fermenter for 4 weeks but there was a very thick layer of sediment at the bottom of my fermenter (about 2 inch) probably due to the hops I added without a bag. Anyway, I could not bottle because the sediment was over the tap, so in my ignorance I thought that maybe there had been a problem with the yeast so I took the lid off the fermenter and gave it a good stir and left for another week, with no difference. I ended up getting a second fermenter and bulk priming into this then into the bottles. The brew looked ok and smelt ok, but I have been doing further reading and am concerned that I may have ruined the batch. Can anyone let me know if I have ruined the brew (will it be flat? will the bottles explode?).

I have another brew going at the moment so need to learn from my mistakes

Dude. You're supposed to transfer into a bottling bucket onto the priming sugar before bottling. That's normal. All of it...the crap in the bottle of the primary is trub. That's hops and protein and whatnot. Supposed to be there. You're supposed to siphon that into another bucket at bottling time so you don't get all that craps in your bottles. Sounds like you did ok, just took a while to get there. Lots of info here if you do some reading.

Oh, and don't stir after fermentation.

If you sanitized the spoon or whatever you stirred with and you did not splash you should be ok.

The more air that you introduce to the fermented beer the more likely you will oxidize the beer.

I use fermenters with no spigots. I then rack to a bottling bucket with the priming solution and then bottle.

If you think you oxidized the beer, wet cardboard taste, drink them fast. It will only get worse.

The good thing is you left it in the fermenter and let it sit a week so all the trub probably settled back down. The beer that went into your bottles is probably just fine as far as clarity.

No reason what you did will cause the beer to be flat.

The problem is stirring up fermented beer introduces oxygen to the beer. Beer and oxygen don't go well together and can lead to a sherry like taste. Nice if you are drinking a glass of sherry, not so nice if you are drinking a glass of beer. In the future gently rack to a bottling bucket and try not to introduce oxygen.

As far as the beer you stirred up? Depends on how much O2 was introduced and how long they sit in bottles. Might be a good one to drink young. But I'd also hold back on a six pack and check them over time and see when/if the sherry flavor shows up.

Thanks for the comments. I sterilized everything but probably put a bit of oxygen into the brew when I stirred it up. Will see how it is after leaving it for a week. Lesson learned ☺