Possible Catastrophe today

So, I was getting ready to start a batch of hard cider today. I cleaned and sterilized everything. I pitched the yeast. The stopper for the jug was a little wet when I put it on. It wasn't very snug when I first put it on the jug, so I stuck the airlock into the stopper, and I pushed on the cider a little. The airlock already had water in it (S-shaped airlock), so there was a little bit of back pressure. In an effort to try to equalize the pressure on both sides of the airlock, I pressed harder on the stopper, at which point it fell into my cider jug.

I sterilized my secondary jug and poured the cider into it from the first jug that had the cider. I used a meat thermometer to pull the stopper out of the first jug because that's all I had at the time. I sterilized the stopper, dried it, put the airlock in it, and pressed it lightly onto the top of the jug.

Do you think my cider will be okay? hahahaha

Most likely, everything will be fine. There is a lot more yeast in there than whatever may have been sticking to the thermometer.

I'm mostly concerned about my cider turning to vinegar. I hope everything was sterile enough.

you only get vinegar when acetobacter converts ethanol to acetic acid in the presence of oxygen. you don't have any ethanol yet, and shouldn't have any oxygen by the time you do. i think the most important thing for you to do is to start drinking something else right now

Haha. Okay. Thank you. I think it will turn out alright, but I wanted to make sure.

Relax. Your apples contain much more crap than you possibly could have put into it by using a sanitized piece of equipment. Don't worry.

Thank you guys for the encouragement. Just want to make sure I'm not doing anything stupid and waiting for it to turn into good cider.

dinnerstick said:

you only get vinegar when acetobacter converts ethanol to acetic acid in the presence of oxygen.

Click to expand...

^ this.