Suckback of blowoff?! WTF?!

So, I've been out of town for a few days and when I left, I left a Peach-Ginger Wheat in the primary. It had fermented out completed by the time I left, but I was letting it there to let the yeast do some 'cleanup'. Anyway, came home and my blowoff bucket was down to about 1/2cm of starsan solution... I had about 1/2 gallon of blowoff liquid when I left.

Why did this happen, its never happened to any of my other brews!? And I've left brews with a blowoff tube for much longer than 8 days before...

Now it appears this Starsan Solution is resting on top of my Peach-Ginger Wheat, it didn't mix in (or at least not the majority of it). I know starsan is supposed to go ineffective when put into beer, but even 1/2g into 4 1/2g of beer?! I hate to ask a "is it ruined" question, but is it? I was planning to try to siphon the beer into secondary tomorrow and siphon in between the trub layer on bottom and starsan layer on top... Will this work!?

Temp change? Sometimes a quick change in temp will change your air pressures. Think that has something to do with it?

You should be ok. I was just listening to archived Sunday Session show about sanitation. They had they inventor of Star-san on and he was saying it would be great nutrient for yeast. JP apparently racked 4 gallons of wort onto 3 gallons of star san, They Star San guy said it actually would have been ok.

ScubaSteve said:

Temp change? Sometimes a quick change in temp will change your air pressures. Think that has something to do with it?

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The temp changed from probably 64 to 55-56 over the 4 days I was missing... Doesn't seem that drastic?

Ah well, I'm going to attempt to rack "out from under" the starsan blanket and see what happens...

RoaringBrewer said:

The temp changed from probably 64 to 55-56 over the 4 days I was missing... Doesn't seem that drastic?

Ah well, I'm going to attempt to rack "out from under" the starsan blanket and see what happens...

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if u can see the layer seperation from Star san to wheat beer than I would do this..If not I would not worry much..it will really just water it down a bit and IMO not change the overal flavor..

Jay

Same thing happened to me with a batch of ESB, although it was my fault -- I was dumb and cold crashed with the blowoff tube submerged. In any event, the beer was fine. Pretty damn delicious, actually.

Can't believe no one's commented on the title of the thread yet.

reshp1 said:

Can't believe no one's commented on the title of the thread yet.

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I thought I'd be in trouble using that title, but I didn't know what else to call it to get the point of the thread across! Maybe it even helped attract some attention! Haha.

discgolfin said:

if u can see the layer seperation from Star san to wheat beer than I would do this..If not I would not worry much..it will really just water it down a bit and IMO not change the overal flavor..

Jay

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It's pretty evident there is some seperation. The top 1/2" of beer is a much lighter/clearer color than the bulk of it. It starts to blend as it works its way down, but I think I can siphon off mostly beer and maybe 1pt starsan, compared to siphoning the whole carboy which would include 1/2g or more of starsan. I know it won't hurt anything, but I'd prefer the beer not to be watered down as it was already only a 1.040 beer...