possible contamination? air-lock cap popped off

just a quick question regarding the subject line. just finished brewing a 5 gallon batch (6 gallon glass carboy) and put the S-shaped airlock with it capped in the rubber stopper as usual. woke up this morning, and at some point...it must've popped off with the bubbling. i sanitized the cap again and recapped the airlock.

should i have a whole lot of worries? it was probably off a few hours i'm assuming. any help would be much appreciated

You shouldn't have any worries. It was an airlock and there was still CO2 being pushed through. But, we all know taht you will worry about things like Enterobacter, Acetobacter, Lactobacillus, Peddiococus, and those wild and crazy ferrel cervisciae.

Sure, there's some risk of infection, but there is NOTHING you can do. This is truly a time when you should heed Charlie's advice that "Nothing spoils the flavor of your beer more than worrying about it."

It's happened to me a few times, air lock will get pushed out or, even stranger, the blow off tube gets pushed out. I've just sanitized and recapped everytime with no noticible problems or off flavors.

Fermentation is an ugly beast sometimes.

Just remember that the bad stuff are not ninja acrobats....whether it is a 3 piece or an s type, they would STILL have to manage to swim through the liquid, then either negotiate a series of twist and turns through an S shaped "track" OR have to dive down, then swim up the center post under the plastic bubbler, then lift said bubbler up enough to the make it into the center post and dive into your fermenter....and STILL have to negotiate the rising co2 current pushing out of the fermenter itself....Think about it...





Needless to say a piece of dust ain't gonna make it. And not much else either. Relax