I think i have a problem

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yzf426scott

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so i made my first batch yesterday and pitched the yeast at about 9:00pm i woke up this morning and my air lock was bubbling very fast i thougt this was a good thing but when i got home tonight from work i went to check on my beer and i found that the air lock cap had come off and the wort had come out of the top of my airlock and was all over the top of my ferminter so without thinking i removed the airlock and stopper and the wort on top started to go back in the ferminter i placed the stopper and airlock back in lid cleaned all wort off lid sanitized stopper and air lock put back in the lid and it was still bubbling but much slower so i have a few questions at this point

1.what did i do wrong to cause this to happen?
2.did i ruin my beer?
 
1. Nothing
2. No
Positive pressure means nothing will get into your fermenter.
There is a ton of information found using the search button. For the first few months spend more time reading and searching for answers than brewing and you will be more comfortable.
 
You had an active fermentation. That is good. Maybe use a blowoff tube from now on. I always do. A short tube and a bottle of water, about as much as an airlock costs. Most likely your beer will be fine. We can't tell the future so you'll have to wait and see. Don't get antsy about dumping your beer like so many other people do for some crazy reason. Let it go and see how it turns out. It will most likely be fine, but the fact the stuff on the outside went back into the beer makes it a higher possibility that something could go wrong. However, you still have a higher probability of it turning out just fine. Let it run it's course and see what happens.
 
I think the OP was worried about infection. Since it was your first batch, and we are assuming you cleaned and sanitized your equip properly before you brewed... the chances of you infecting your beer from a little krausen reabsorbing into your batch are low.

Not to be a smart ass to anyone, but when you are brewing your first batch, you don't know a lot about the terminology and acronyms being thrown all over the forum. Google is awesome if you know what you are looking for.

I suggest watching some videos on Youtube, reading the forum and picking up a few books. How to Brew by Palmer is a great beginners manual.
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html


Blow off tubes.
[ame]http://www.google.com/search?q=blow+off+tube&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:eek:fficial&client=firefox-a[/ame]
 
Same thing happened to me this week. I just pulled the airlock, cleaned the top of the primary and the airlock and sprayed everything down with some starsan I keep in a spray bottle. I assumed there would be a "blanket" of CO2 on top that would protect my beer from anything getting in.

Always keep a spray bottle of starsan ready to go.
 
Yeast is pretty good at killing the bacteria that causes infections. You're unlikely to get a serious infection unless you did a REMARKABLY bad job sanitizing, or if you added an uncooked chicken breast to your recipe.

Just wait it out, bottle or keg as usual, and enjoy when you're done.
 
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