Well, I forgot to sanitize my primary.

Nothing more to say than that. I was making plans while the wort was chilling and I just forgot. I cleaned it pretty thoroughly before pouring in the wort but - sigh. I can't believe myself.

Here's hoping it's okay.

D'oh!

I bet it's OK. If you pitched enough strong healthy yeast, they'll overwhelm any other competition quickly.

-Steve

Oh, ****. Dump your beer right now, it's surely going to get contaminated.

During my first AG, I was so preoccupied with not hitting my mash temps right that I didn't mix up my sanitizer properly. Everything that touched the wort that day was under-done on sanitizer.

As expected, after pitching the starter, it rocked out and never had any problems.

Yep, same here last week. I was a little distracted, and just clear forgot. It looks OK for now, bubbling away quite happily, so it looks like I got away with it.

Yeah, crossing my fingers. I did clean it with bleach after my last batch, but that was a couple of weeks ago. It's just bubbling a little, but I'm using Wit yeast and I've heard it's a slow starter.

oh well....at least you remembered to clean it, so it should be just fine! Remember that beer was brewed for thousands of years before yeast and bacteria were even known about. Sanitization helps eliminate any chance of having too much bacteria in there to outpace your yeast....but in a clean vessel and a healthy yeast count, your yeast is going to make that batch drinkable beer before any other microbe has a chance.

+1 on no worries. You launched a real blitzkrieg on any critters in the fermenter when you pitched billions and billions of yeast in there. Overwhelming force tends to win.

We've all done something like that...I racked to an un sanitized (but clean) secondary once...and my beer lived to tell about it...as has other people's

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

Revvy said:

We've all done something like that...I racked to an un sanitized (but clean) secondary once...and my beer lived to tell about it...as has other people's

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

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I did the same thing two weeks ago with my Lake Walk Pale Ale- was so concerned about my first time dry-hopping that I didn't sanitize the fermenter. Going into bottles, it may have been the best beer I've ever made. Hooray beer!

What did you use to clean the fermenter? Many cleaners have antimicrobial properties. Bleach, Oxyclean, and even some dish soaps will wipe out a lot of bacteria and wild yeast. They just don't do it to the rate that StarSan and iodine do. I am sure that you will end up with beer.

beerkrump said:

What did you use to clean the fermenter? Many cleaners have antimicrobial properties. Bleach, Oxyclean, and even some dish soaps will wipe out a lot of bacteria and wild yeast. They just don't do it to the rate that StarSan and iodine do. I am sure that you will end up with beer.

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+1 to this!!!!!

Go take a look at my photo walkthrough of Labatt's first "pioneer" brewery from the 1840's https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/labatt-pioneer-brewery-128740/

Wood fermenters, open cooling pans, open doors, cracks in the logs and beams letting air in, and not one bottle of starsan in sight. And yet, beer was tasty enough most of the time to survive culturally for 4,000 years, and not go the way of pepsi clear or new coke.

The way I figure even just having some soap and water, basic 21st century hygiene, and a basic understanding of germ theory trumps how it was done from Gilgamesh's time through Louis Pasteure's....

In most places we don't have to even worry about boiling our water before drinking it.

beerkrump said:

What did you use to clean the fermenter? Many cleaners have antimicrobial properties. Bleach, Oxyclean, and even some dish soaps will wipe out a lot of bacteria and wild yeast. They just don't do it to the rate that StarSan and iodine do. I am sure that you will end up with beer.

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Yeah, I just used dish soap. I cleaned it pretty thoroughly with bleach after bottling my last batch, so I have been in the habit of giving it a once over on brewing day (with the intent of sanitizing, of course).

I cursed myself for forgetting to starsan my primary on one of my batches and vowed to be more careful.

The two weeks later I forgot to starsan my autosiphon when I transferred the same batch OUT of the primary.

*facepalm*

Came out fine though.

Yep, just tasted my hydro sample. It's already delicious, it's not done fermenting and there's not a single thing off about it at this stage. I can already tell this is going to be GOOD.

I had a blonde ale clearing in my secondary yesterday.

After I racked to bottling bucket and bottled last night, I put some fresh tap water in the secondary and shook the hell out of it to just rinse it out.

I put the secondary carboy in the drainer to dry out, and left it until this evening. I sanitized my racking cane and auto siphon, the cap and the airlock, but forgot to sanitize the carboy I rinsed last night before racking the brown ale in my primary in there for clarifying.

I hope it turns out OK. Reading this thread I'll likely be OK. Lets wait and see a few days if I get any infections

What would happen if you just drop a 1/4 or 1/2 cup of sanitizing solution (at whatever the recommended strength is for the solution) into your secondary to prevent any infections. Would something like that work?

portalgod said:

What would happen if you just drop a 1/4 or 1/2 cup of sanitizing solution (at whatever the recommended strength is for the solution) into your secondary to prevent any infections. Would something like that work?

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No. If one were to rack an infected beer into a secondary, the fact that the interior surface of the secondary is sanitized will not eliminate the infection. Of course, it will ensure that an uninfected beer does not get infected from bugs in the secondary.

kyleobie said:

Nothing more to say than that. I was making plans while the wort was chilling and I just forgot. I cleaned it pretty thoroughly before pouring in the wort but - sigh. I can't believe myself.

Here's hoping it's okay.

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Nothing left to do but hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

You'll be fine. Contaminations come out of nowhere. Nothing ever goes wrong when something has obviously gone wrong.