SPILLED yeast! DOh

Hi all

I am an idiot.

I was getting a brew ready, mixed yeast in a cup with water and left aside.

was ready to pitch, spilled yeast on floor, no more yeast to hand. no local HBS.

So I scraped the mess off the floor and pitched all the lumpy bits.

its a 10 litre brew but yeast may be enough for a 2o litre batch, but most of it is on the floor.

Might the yeast still work given time?
Whats my infection risk? High or very high?

Are you serious? Don't offer it to any friends at least. Was the floor cleaned and sanitized? I wouldn't have gone any further, it reminds me of burger flippers dropping a patty on the floor and then putting in the Big mac you just ordered LOL

casperjah said:

Hi all

I am an idiot.

I was getting a brew ready, mixed yeast in a cup with water and left aside.

was ready to pitch, spilled yeast on floor, no more yeast to hand. no local HBS.

So I scraped the mess off the floor and pitched all the lumpy bits.

its a 10 litre brew but yeast may be enough for a 2o litre batch, but most of it is on the floor.

Might the yeast still work given time?
Whats my infection risk? High or very high?

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Scrapped as in threw in the trash or scraped like cleaned up and used anyway?

i would love to see this turn in to one of those "i cant believe this beer came out good" threads

Righlander said:

i would love to see this turn in to one of those "i cant believe this beer came out good" threads

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It probably will.

For future reference put a lid on the bucket and get some yeast to pitch the next day. Your chances of success will likely be higher. If there's no lhbs around you could at least try to get beer by pitching bread yeast and letting it age a long time.

I hope you just pitched whatever was left in the glass, and not what was on the floor.

Always have an extra packet of dry yeast in the fridge.

Always.

You're likely introducing a good deal of wild yeast and mold (and some bacteria) into the brew if you took it off of a floor that has had anything walk on it from outside. Be interesting to see how this beer turns out at least...

HexKrak said:

I hope you just pitched whatever was left in the glass, and not what was on the floor.

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lol im pretty sure he said he scraped it off of the floor and pitched it. good times

Didn't Craigtube once do the same thing, and have to pick pigeon feather out of it before pitching?

mlg5039 said:

It probably will.

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+1 yeast is pretty tough stuff.

maybe throw in a second pitch of yeast as soon as possible? might help the yeast take over the fermentation, crowding out wild yeasts and bacteria?

definitely let the whole thing ferment, then keg or bottle as usual. Try it yourself, probably won't hurt you. If it tastes good, then let us know.

If it tastes bad... dump it.

Revvy said:

Didn't Craigtube once do the same thing, and have to pick pigeon feather out of it before pitching?

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watched most of his vids, don't think I saw that one. I would think pigeon feather would add body and mouthfeel though

Thanks for replies all. A mixed resppnse. It was scraped very quickly off a recently cleaned tiled floor. I left the liquid and kust scraped up lumps of yeast. On a positive note I pitched quickly at 23 C and it began bubbling within an hour or 2. It's a brupacks Belgian witbier and comes with teabag of hops and one of spices. Was really looking forward to it so I will just have to give it time. i will fill you in on fg when i bottle next week and taste. I have never really had a bad or infected batch and this may be my first. As its also my first yime using this product I won't be able to judge it by taste. I have a nice Irish stout done for christmas and next up is a brupacks pilsner. Happy Christmas brewers

Just for the future keep some back up dry yeast in the fridge. Even if it won't be for style if you only stock nottingham or S-05 it will still be beer and not a waste of 2.5ish gallons of beer.

Tile scraped whit.

Update if anyone is following this - I bottled the beer last week, it looked ok but bottled vdery cloudy looking. Has cleared somewhat since but I notice a bit of a scum on the top of the bottles, something I have never seen before, and a fair bit of sediment after a week of secondary fermenting in the bottles. There was a 'strong' kind of smell from the wort, it kind of burned a bit when I inhaled/sniffed yet the wort itself smelled like beer all right.

I tasted the wort, brave man that I am and TBH I felt it tasted like it was going in the right direction. Its a belgian wheatbeer (Brupacks beers of the World) that comes with a bag of spices/herbs/orange peel. So I will give iot another 2 weeks then try a bottle. The scum on top is making me weary as its quite thick and clings to the bottles, leaving a ring on top.

Cheers all and happy new year

casperjah said:

Hi all
So I scraped the mess off the floor and pitched all the lumpy bits.

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Sorry for laughing at your misfortune but that has absolutely in knots. (I reckon it should be added to John Palmer's How To Brew "If your yeast falls on the floor, just scrape up all the lumpy bits that you can, pitch them and you'll be fine").

I'm amazed and heartened at the fact that it might actually turn out ok according to your last post. Maybe all this sanitation stuff is a bit overblown after all?

Where in Ireland are you? (I'm a Cavan man, now in NZ)

Cloudiness is to be expected in a recipe like that, and the "strong" smell is probably because it's young and green. As for the scum, it's possible that it is some yeast floaters. If I were you, I would try one every so often and make sure nothing nasty is going on in those bottles. If you notice the taste getting worse, throw them in the fridge to stop any fermentation/spoilage and drink them as they are.

I have since googled it and found a scum can be ok and it should fall. true to form it fell and bottles appear to be clearing. I dropped one though and it burst so a lot of carbonation going on. (burst a reusable 740ml coopers plastic bottle).

I will try one weekend after next.

I do think we are over careful w.r.t. sanitizing, especially sterilising, and I have come across as many new brewers ruining beer by not rinsing out their chemicals used to sterilise than ruining with infection.

However I don't recommend using yeast off a kitchen floor.

Aidan - I am in Gaillimh, though I emigrated here from Dublin.

casperjah said:

I have since googled it and found a scum can be ok and it should fall. true to form it fell and bottles appear to be clearing. I dropped one though and it burst so a lot of carbonation going on. (burst a reusable 740ml coopers plastic bottle).

I will try one weekend after next.

I do think we are over careful w.r.t. sanitizing, especially sterilising, and I have come across as many new brewers ruining beer by not rinsing out their chemicals used to sterilise than ruining with infection.

However I don't recommend using yeast off a kitchen floor.

Aidan - I am in Gaillimh, though I emigrated here from Dublin.

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Brewers made beer without any idea what yeast was nor, I assume, with very good sanitary practices for longer than we have been making beer knowing about those things. Just more proof that it really is hard to screw up a beer

If the bottles are over carbonating, you might want to go through and release a little pressure on each a few times to make sure you don't get any bursting without dropping them.

I actually uncorked a whole batch and poured it back into a fermetner once. I waited for ir to finish (again), and rebottled it with the correct amount of priming sugar. It worked fairly well.

casperjah said:

it kind of burned a bit when I inhaled/sniffed

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Was likely the CO2 layer sitting on top of the beer.

I love that this seems to be going positively for you and I am praying for a happy ending. I feel that too many people take sanitization to the level of fanatical-sanitizism. I am not lax in my sanitizing, however I know that fermentation is simply a numbers game. The army of yeast versus invading hordes of nasties. So long as the yeast far outnumbers the nasties you will have a perfectly drinkable beer

(This isn't to say that a little more caution shouldn't be used next time though. Hahaha!)

Right all, moment of truth, just opened a bottle.

1 - its not incredibly carbonated but the bottle I opened was one I had let a bit of pressure out of as I was afraid of over - carbonation. However its only bottled 2 weeks. I put in 2 carbonation drops in 740ml coopers PET bottles.
2 - No 'off' smells so as already mentioned by tjpfeister the bad 'burning' smell in the fermenter was probably CO2. Slightly 'green' smell that always seems to be present with a newly bottled beer
3 Its very cloudy, see picture, but its meant to be a cloudy witbier
4 I can faintly taste the herbs/orange peel/spices that came with the pack and its very like Hoegaarden
5 No sediment in suspension or scum on top

Overall this is very good, I think it will improve with time and be a lovely wheat beer. It would be lovely with a slice of fruit and reminds me of beers like Hoegarden and one called 'Blue Moon' (I think) that I recently bought.

here is a pic of first pour - the head only lasted a while:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/casperjah/5355000057/

[I can't post pictures, maybe its a premium thing, the link should work. ]

So thanks everyone, overall its looking like the good bacteria won. Although sanitization is important its not something to go throwing away a mix over. I only scraped half my yeast off the floor and it was obviously enough. Thansk for the help and encouragement that made me wait it out and not pour it out.

5 second rule! I am thrilled that it seems to be working out.

Good looking beer, like you said it's a wit and cloudy isn't terrible. Sounds like a little more time and you'll have a fine beer. I know some people were busting your balls about the yeast scraping, but it's nice to see that beer is much tougher stuff than we give it credit for. Good Job!

Terje

Congratulations Casper! What will you name it? I like the concept of 5-second rule, or floor-spice in the name ;-)

Glad to hear it all worked out! Looks nice from that pic

So I guess a new first step in the brewing process for all new brewers should be:

First Sanitize your entire floor with Star San or Iodofor. Then don sanitized hospital slippers and proceed back into the brewing room to sanitize your equipment LOL


Rev.

Maybe I missed this somewhere in the thread, but how did your FG turn out?

My FG came out, If I remember, slightly high - like 1012 or something. However I often find it hard to get my beers to drop to 1010 or 1008. I did not make a record of it afterwards though as I was so sure it was not going to work.

As for a name its got to be something lke "Jay's 5 second floor tile witbeer" or "Irish Ceramic Wheatbeer"

Has anyone else on here used the Brupacks Beers of the World Kits? Its one of those. I have a pilsner to do next, will do this one without the addition of floor tiles and see if its as good!!

I am by no means, an expert. And I know beers CAN become infected, from reading about it here, and other places. But, I have often thought to myself about how long humans have been brewing beer, long before anybody knew anything about proper sanitization. For beer to have worked then, it must be some pretty hardy stuff. In my opinion. Not to say we shouldn't strive for sanitization.

On Sunday I brewed a whole grain "Kiwi Express" IPA from Northern Brewer. Everything was going well with the mash, batch sparging and hitting my pre-boil and post-boil gravity. As the wort was chilling, I went into the kitchen to rehydrate the Safale 05 yeast. I cut the package open and started to pour the yeast into the measuring cup with warm water when I dropped the package on the floor and over half the yeast went flying out. I didn't have an extra package (now have 3 extras on order) and the local LHBS is closed on Sundays and Mondays. I thought about just putting the wort in the carboy and waiting until Tuesday to get and pitch yeast. However, I just couldn't stand waiting. So, I brushed as much of the yeast as I could off the floor and onto a piece of paper, poured it in the cup of water to rehydrate and tried to pick out as many crumbs and other debris from the kitchen floor as possible. I then oxygenaged the wort, pitched the yeast and crossed my fingers before doing a search here. 18 hours after pitching, no activity. 24 hours after, small white spots forming on the surface. 36 hours after, larger white spots forming on surface. I was convinced it was infected for sure. 48 hours later, what looks like a very thin krausen seemed to be forming. Now almost 72 hours later, I have a 1/2 inch krausen forming, at least I hope its a normal krausen. It looks very clean, uniform and white with very small bubbles which is seems uncharacteristic, but it does not look like any infection I have found on this site. I will keep my fingers crossed, but will never roll the dice like this again. ALWAYS keep spare yeast on hand!

Does it smell like beer?

Checked it again last night. It finally has a normal looking krausen and, yes, it smells like beer -- very hoppy beer. I think one of the reasons the fermentation started slow is because the internal temperature of the wort was only 60 degrees. I warmed it a few degrees and it seems to be doing much better. So far, so good.

pvpeacock said:

... is because the internal temperature of the wort was only 60 degrees. I warmed it a few degrees and it seems to be doing much better.

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I've done that intentionally and it has produced results I enjoy.

It also seems that once it warms up the fermentation really takes off.

It's been two weeks since I pitched yeast I spillled on the kitchen floor, and the krausen finally fell and the beer looks clear as can be. No infection. SG was 1.012 yesterday, and it tasted great. I will check the SG again in a day or two before kegging it. What a relief. However, I learned my lesson: I will not pitch yeast off the kitchen floor again. After spending 4 hours brewing, I should have waited until I could get new yeast before pitching. I would have been heartboroken if I had to throw the entire batch away. To make sure this doesn't happen again, I bought some spare Safale 005 packets and put them in the refrigerator. Lesson learned.