Broken Floating Thermometer

First of all:

Yesterday I finished brewing an IPA... had the the floating thermometer in the brew kettle while it was chilling down in an ice bath. I hit the 85-90 degrees mark, and poured the wort in the carboy and topped it off to 5 gallons with cold water.

When I was cleaning up, I realized the top of the floating thermometer was cracked off No mercury was released, but I do not know when this happened...

My guess it might of been when I put it in the brew kettle while it was chilling. If this is the case, I may poured some broken glass shards into my carboy.

Is this batch completely 'effed? If not, what would be the best way to ensure no broken glass moves from the primary into the bottling bucket? I am guessing it will just fall down and stick in the trub and won't come through, but I am just a little nervous because I don't know when or where the thermometer broke..

HELP!

The glass will sink and you have a few options.

- be 100% safe and ditch the batch

- rack to secondary in a few weeks and leave a healthy 1/2" or so behind, making sure your racking cane never hits the trub in the bottom and affix some sort of filter to the bottom of your racking cane (piece of a paint strainer bag for example)

- run the beer thru a filter (if you have a march pump and a filter housing)


If the beer sits long enough I think your risk is minimal, but the risk does exist and you need to determine what's right for you. I would personally only drink it if I ran it thru a filter, which is probably overkill but i'd rather err on the side of caution when there is broken glass in something I am going to drink.

good luck - let us know what you decide.

I would first run it through a filter exactly as described in option #2 or #3. Look for and (carefully) find the glass in the trub afterward. I'm fairly sure the glass won't go through the filter but it's possible little slivers could get through it.

Someone suggested to me that it may have broken from taking the thermometer out of the hot wort and putting it in the cold ice bath when I was ready to pour the wort into the carboy... the way the thermometer broke, looks like the rounded top just popped off...

I figured if it did crack in the kettle, it would of been more broken and shattered...

From what I remember, when I took the thermometer out of the kettle, it did not look broken at the top, and if it was... there *should* of been some brown wort inside the thermometer (which there wasnt). Does the going from too hot to too cold sound logical? I figure its a thermometer, so it should be able to handle a temperature change...

Temp changes from really hot to really cold could indeed break the glass.... good luck and most of all be safe.

I've had those crack for no apparent reason which is why I don't use them anymore.

Racking 1/2" off the trub should do the trick.

Cool thanks for the input.. I'll let it sit for the 2 weeks, and filter it as best I can and take a look in the trub for anything left over.. Hopefully everything is OK and the thermometer broke elsewhere.

Are you sure it's a mercury thermometer at all? You really shouldn't use a mercury thermometer in something you're going to be drinking. But mercury thermometers are very rare these days.

viking999 said:

Are you sure it's a mercury thermometer at all? You really shouldn't use a mercury thermometer in something you're going to be drinking. But mercury thermometers are very rare these days.

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I did not catch that in my original reply - I assumed the thermometer "shell" broke, envisioning a hydrometer w/ a thermometer inside... if the actual thermometer itself broke I would not drink that batch. It is just alcohol and dye (if its a red thermometer) but my trust in the manufacturing plants wherever they are made just isn't there... If it was just broken glass around the thermometer then my suggestions above still stand... if the actual thermometer itself broke I recommend sacrificial dumpage.

Correct, it is not a mercury thermometer...

And yes, just a small part of the shell around the actual thermometer broke...

This is the thermometer I have (or had):

(sorry for the massive picture)

So, I think I should be good if only a small part of the shell broke.. What about the red stuff at the bottom of the thermometer? Is that just wax?

not wax it would melt . Most likely an epoxy of some sort to hold the steel shot in place

I've seen a couple other threads like this too. No one should ever buy these piece of garbage thermos. I've had two break on me. Luckily, the worst I've ever had was while boiling 10 gallons for strike water. Still a total pain in the ass to pour that all out and start over. Why does anyone sell these things to brewers? We never learn until we're totally inconvenienced. A HBS should realize this and make the logical decision to only sell metal or digital.

bdnoona said:

I've seen a couple other threads like this too. No one should ever buy these piece of garbage thermos. I've had two break on me. Luckily, the worst I've ever had was while boiling 10 gallons for strike water. Still a total pain in the ass to pour that all out and start over. Why does anyone sell these things to brewers? We never learn until we're totally inconvenienced. A HBS should realize this and make the logical decision to only sell metal or digital.

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I agree my man. Every tip/advice/recommendation I got from my LHBS has sucked. I have gotten all my information from HBT and trust everyone's opinion on HBT over my LHBS. Luckily only a small bit of glass broke at the top, so I will take extra caution will siphoning. But I 100% agree with you, LHBS's just seem to try and make a buck off people instead of trying to help them make some good beer (like the kind people on this forum do!)

To that, I salute each and every person on this forum!

At least with heat fractures, the glass usually splits along a single line and doesn't shatter much, if at all. This isn't so say you shouldn't take all due caution so you don't drink glass pieces!

Gremlyn1 said:

At least with heat fractures, the glass usually splits along a single line and doesn't shatter much, if at all. This isn't so say you shouldn't take all due caution so you don't drink glass pieces!

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The worst part is, I don't know WHEN it happened. I know it had to be sometime from cooling the wort to transferring into the carboy... so worst case would be it happened while the wort was cooling and it broke in there... if not, i'm in like flint...

I dug this up after my own thermometer break, figured I would add what I know/found.

First if your thermometer is a blue liquid like mine was it is most likely dyed isoamyl benzoate which is also an artificial berry flavoring. Still check with the manufacturer but this is harmless.

Second, glass shards. Aside from rather large sharp and easily detectable pieces glass is actually not that dangerous. Have one kid chew up a glass ornament on a Christmas tree and you will find that out. Like your beer, your body is tougher than you think.

Always always remember, "relax, don't worry, have a home brew."

What if the little balls in the bottom of the thermometer have gotten into the beer? Mine broke while I was steeping my grains, luckily only a portion of the balls got into the wort. I filtered it out before the boil, but is it safe to drink. Is there any chance something could leech from the balls into the wort at temperature like that??

Don't get your balls so close to the hot wort.

But seriously, my thermometer shattered once as well, luckily was just while heating the water so I dumped it all and started over.

Have been using a metal thermometer ever since and now have a Thermapen on the way