sanitation nightmare+yeast washing

I was hoping to collect and wash the Wyeast 1332 after a 3-4 week primary, maybe longer if I buy another primary soon.

The problem is I had a sanitation disaster. I got distracted and forgot to test my new chiller before use. So, predictably, it sprayed a ton of crappy, chlorinated, un-sanitized hose water into my wort.

The Question: after a fairly long primary, if I see or taste no signs of infection, do you think it would be safe to keep the yeast.

Absolutely. Chlorinated water is sanitized.

theredben said:

Absolutely. Chlorinated water is sanitized.

Click to expand...

But the garden hose is not.

That is why he is actually tasting it to see if it is infected.

I would be more worried about chlorophenols than infection personally.

Add a campden tablet before fermentation to prevent the chlorophenols. If you don't your beer will have a bandaid like taste. Might not be an issue if you only had a little bit of water get into it.

I would assume that the chiller sprung it's leak while the wort was still near boiling. If that's the case and you caught it in time, the temps should kill most bacterias in a few minutes.

And to answer your actual question...

Go ahead and harvest the yeast, and if you don't notice any off flavors, I say use it.

If it smells like uninfected beer, and tastes like uninfected beer, it must be uninfected beer. I would think the yeast would be okay if the above is true. I would harvest and plan a starter before using again.

Sort of similar...When using my immersion chiller with ice water coolant, condensation (water vapor open to "biohazard") frequently drips down the the copper into the tin foil covered brew pot. At first this made me quite nervous, but haven't had a bad batch (knock on wood) as a result of this. Cheers.