No water in airlock

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AutoDisaster

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Hello Fellows

I have had a Coopers brand Stout made fermenting for 5 days, made from two cans of liquid malt extract without additional sugar. I have neglected to monitor it due to other activities and just discovered that I didn't have any water in the airlock.

It has been maintained at around 20 degrees celcius (go the metric system!). The SG has gone down from 1054 to 1028 over that period. It tastes okay, similar to previous batches, and looks normal - no visible signs of infection.

Does anyone have any knowledge or opinions about the effects of not having a secure airlock?

Cheers

Alex Mortlock
 
AutoDisaster said:
Does anyone have any knowledge or opinions about the effects of not having a secure airlock?

You run a higher risk of getting an infection, but it sounds like your beer is fine. If you were able to drink some and it tasted ok, it's not infected.

-walker
 
I don't have direct knowledge, but I can surmise (ok, call it opinion, nay, call it a guess). You are probably OK if you had the water lock on. Yes, you were open to the air. But, it wasn't a straight path to the outside, and bacteria wouldn't have crawled through the convolutions of your dry water lock.

See Figure 4 about Louis Pasteur's experiments to settle the question of spontaneous generation.
 
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