Broken Hydro

I put a broken hydro in to some wort to measure and realized it after I did it. The bottom was broken, a lot of the little balls were in the san bucket, not sure if any got into the beer. Should I leave a lot of beer to avoid getting the lead balls into the final product, should I worry about lead poisoning? Should I dump the entire batch? Any experience with this? Any input would be great.

This topic has come up before and while no one will agree, the majority recommend dumping the batch. Sorry.

Sorry but I agree with McKBrew, dump it. This is a really good example of why you should remove a sample to take your reading. Maybe someone else who thinks that taking a reading in their bucket is a good idea will rethink it after reading this post.

It's steel shot, not lead.

There's no real consensus - though it does lean towards dumping the batch.

That said, I'm stubborn and currently have a keg of brown ale (hazelnut clone) in which the thermometer broke pre fermentation. Based on my research and stubbornness - I decided not to dump the batch. Tastes fine...

I've done the exact same thing........and when I bought my new hyrdrometer, I also bought a fermtech wine thief so I would not do it again. I would highly recommend the fermtech, it makes wort sampling so much easier......very much worth the price.

It's just steel, so no health risk with it (unless you had a really old one). The bigger risk is pieces of glass I think. In my case, I broke mine in my boil pot when I took a sample after cooling, accidently let it go to fast, and it hit the bottom and broke.

I kept my beer, and it was fine. I racked it from the boil pot to my bottling bucket, then used the spigot on the bucket to transfer to my carboy......just to make sure no glass or shot made it into the brew.

Steel in the bottom of the hydrometer? Mine is non magnetic, so I assume it is indeed lead. I learned the "hydrometers are fragile instruments" lesson back when I was a beginning cider-maker, and luckily the lesson was learned on the countertop and not in the bucket. Since then I've only taken samples out to test. Besides, if you don't break the hydrometer, it is a good time to sample the wort anyway so you don't have to sanitize as much stuff!

nebben said:

Steel in the bottom of the hydrometer? Mine is non magnetic, so I assume it is indeed lead. I learned the "hydrometers are fragile instruments" lesson back when I was a beginning cider-maker, and luckily the lesson was learned on the countertop and not in the bucket. Since then I've only taken samples out to test. Besides, if you don't break the hydrometer, it is a good time to sample the wort anyway so you don't have to sanitize as much stuff!

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Interesting, I just checked my new one and it's not magnetic. My old one that broke was.......because I put a magnet in the bottom of boil pan when I broke it. Still, I don't think it's lead, it looks like the bismuth in my duck shells.

Regardless......I still don't see the harm even if it is lead, long as you rack it off. I wouldn't age the beer on it;-) Speaking for myself, I sure wouldn't waste the beer.

Hell, many of us grew up in houses with lead paint, lead water pipes, and ate off plates with lead based paint, have lead based fillings, and bit down on plenty of lead splitshot sinkers.

Hops, yeast, protiens, etc ALL settle into beer/wort yet he should dump a batch because there may be some glass or steel in it?

Let it settle and leave it alone when its done for a week then put a piece of panty hose over the siphon tube leaving it off the bottom of the fermenter by around 1 1/2".
Leave more than usual in the fermenter , beats the hell out of throwing away beer.

Try this
Break a glass in a bucket of water
Walk away
Go back the next day
Where is ALL THE GLASS?
At the BOTTOM

Most importantly, if you drop your hydrometer in the bucket to test your sg, you don't get to drink your sample!

Thanks for all the feedback. I probably will keep the batch and just leave alot at the bottom when I keg.