Airlock Question

I mistakenly did not put any water into the airlock on the lid of my brew pail (i brewed 2 days ago). Anyone know if this will ruin the batch?

newerbrewer said:

I mistakenly did not put any water into the airlock on the lid of my brew pail (i brewed 2 days ago). Anyone know if this will ruin the batch?

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It will not ruin it. An empty airlock is definitely not recommended and more can potentially get into your beer, but hopefully just having it there will keep any crud out. Fill it with something like vodka or sanitized water now and let it ride. It should be just fine.

awesome - i'm not going to make this mistake again. thanks for the advice!

Even without liquid I think it would still be very hard for bad stuff to get in - but it does need the liquid to perform its main function of venting CO2 but keeping air out. The first couple of days it's expelling a lot of CO2 so everything should be fine.

I often leave my airlocks dry for the first couple of hours, especially if the wort temperature is still above ambient temperature. That way it won't suck liquid back into the bucket as it cools.

Pasteurs original concept "airlock" had no fluid in it, but I usually keep sanitizer or vodka in mine.