First AG Brew Day in 10 Months ...and 1 fatal problem

So I haven't brewed in 10 months (I know, shame on me!). Everything went well as I took my time and consumed a growler of Troegs scratch #83 - Impending Descent.

But then I made a fatal mistake. After the boil, I put the pot in some snow and stirred like hell to bring the temperature down before adding the yeast.

HSA. Am I doomed?

It's a 5 gallon batch of Russian Imperial Stout, with 25 pounds of grain, dark chocolate, pomegranate and I plan on adding a little coffee on bottling day.

RDWHAHB???

Did you splash a bunch while you were stirring? Simply creating a whirlpool isn't going to do a lot of HSA - people do whirlpools all the time while cooling.
Even if you splashed a little and you get some oxidation, I doubt it'll be noticeable in an RIS.

Chill.

I know this is no help, but how rockin' was Impending Descent? I had that at the brewery and it was knock your socks off good. Hope your beer turns out well.

haha, thanks for the reply. I would say I splashed it quite a bit. Probably as much as you could without it spashing out all over my feet.

Oh, Impending Descent was incredible. It's not an easy thing to say, but it may be my favorite of all the scratch beers I've tried. I had to keep going back to take more than my fair share.

HSA is way overblown IMO.

Yeah I've read a lot about it today on old threads (5 years) and there seems to be a lot of conflicting answers.

I don't think HSA is considered the boogeyman it once was.

I thought that HSA was a potential concern pre-boil, not post-boil.

Either way, I don't think it's really a worry for homebrewers.

Thanks. That's what I was leaning towards after countless threads on the subject. Not that I'll encourage it or make the same mistake again.

Awesome quote by the way!

LandoLincoln said:

I thought that HSA was a potential concern pre-boil, not post-boil.

Either way, I don't think it's really a worry for homebrewers.

Click to expand...

From what I've read this morning (and I am obviously not a great source of information on the subject), it seems as though it's not much of a problem pre-boil because boiling rids the wort of the oxygen?

And I did read some posts by people who seem to know what they're talking about mentioning HSA is a possible problem, but not necessarily to homebrewers.

HSA is really only a concern for larger brewers where an improperly primed pump or some other system failure could literally be beating gallons and gallons of air into boiling wort being churned through the brewhouse. Not something a homebrewer should worry about at all- I'm skeptical that we could even achieve it without a pump if we TRIED to.