Beer explosion

Oh my, brewed a batch on Thursday last week returned from a long weekend away today (Monday) and the stopper and air loc had blown 10 feet away from the bottle and lost a couple inches of wort for a five gallon container. I do believe that fermentation has started.

I have no idea how long the stopper has been out ( max 3.5 days) Is the batch ruined???? Have enough bad stuff floated into the bottle or should I proceed as normal. Hate to just dump it

thoughts

Ride it out... fermentation activity should have been sufficent enough to keep baddies out and CO2 covering the wort. Recover/sanitize everything and go from there. You should be ok.

Yep, ride it out.
At this point, you can't change what's been done and since you are out nothing by seeing what you get I would just let do it's thing.

I hadn't planned on doing a secondary fermentation, but in this case might it be worth while just to be able to put the wort in a cleaner bottle, or am I just worrying to much? As a newbe my brewing has been not been very positive.

dave8fire said:

I hadn't planned on doing a secondary fermentation, but in this case might it be worth while just to be able to put the wort in a cleaner bottle, or am I just worrying to much? As a newbe my brewing has been not been very positive.

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You are worrying too much. Stick a new airlock on it and let it go!

Moving it to a secondary only increases the odds of infection and oxidation. Simply let it be... 95% chance you are fine!

im gonna go ahead and suggest that you just read up from my post.

RDWHAHB and use a blowoff tube next time!

The good thing about carbon dioxide is its heavier than air so it will sink to the bottom of the headspace and displace the oxygen. Also, during fermentation its generating a lot of Co2 obviously, and liquid can only hold so much gas at STP, so while the yeast is cranking out CO2 it pushes other gases out of the newly formed beer in the process. This means that even tho it was open for a while u may have had no oxidation. If a fruit fly or other bug flew in there it may contaminate it, or you might develop mold spores, but other than that (or rather in spite of that) you still might be ok. Good luck!!

(I had a small blowout last night. I cover my fermentors with a think dark blanket to keep the light out, and this also serves to cover the swamp cooler just in case something like this happens. The mess was contained, and i put the airlocks back in place within a few hours. I should probably use a blowoff tube but I just use fermcap to keep the foam at bay).