First solo brew down

I did a partial mash and my mash-sparge-boil went about as smooth as possible. No boilovers, hit all the time marks, everything was great. My only hiccup and the saddest part of my day was when I was siphoning into my fermentation bucket and my sanitized bucket became unsanitized...... so I had to dump ~1.5 gallons of delicious wort. So now I have 1.5 gallons of wort and 2 gallons of sparge water fermenting. This threw off my OG (as the 3 gallons of wort had 6.6lbs of LME) and I ended up with an OG of 1.042, my target was 1.066.

Ohh well, I will still get beer in 3-4 weeks. We will have to see how it turns out

Congratulations on your successful brew day!

How did you bucket become unsanitized and why did you decide to dump? Even if there was a serious issue like a swarm of flies getting into the wort, it would be worth it to split off some yeast and ferment that other 1.5 gallons separately. You never know if it will pull through.

Yeah, what happened?

hal2814 said:

Congratulations on your successful brew day!

How did you bucket become unsanitized and why did you decide to dump? Even if there was a serious issue like a swarm of flies getting into the wort, it would be worth it to split off some yeast and ferment that other 1.5 gallons separately. You never know if it will pull through.

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I agree. Sometimes I think we home brewers become sanitation nazis. Don't get me wrong here, we do need to sanitze and work in a clean environment, but then again is our level of fear justified?

Congrats! So how did the bucket become un-sanitized?

Gammon N Beer said:

I agree. Sometimes I think we home brewers become sanitation nazis. Don't get me wrong here, we do need to sanitze and work in a clean environment, but then again is our level of fear justified?

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especially where beer and ferment-ables are concerned...best offense is a good defense.

Sure, we most likely don't need to have that spray bottle with more sanitizer, but if it prevents an infection that destroys your beer (and your holiday season) then I would say....go nuts with it!

I was picking up a few things and throwing them into the sink when I dropped a fork covered in pancake batter. The fork managed to bounce off the edge of the counter, shoot over towards the bucket, and squeeze through the 3-4 inch wide gap between the edge of the bucket and the cover.

I figured I would not chance it, and I don't have an extra fermentation vessel yet. Good news though, 11 hours after pitching the yeast we have action in the air lock.

pancake porter?

that suks, i would splited that wort and made put it in two separat fermenters. you newer know you might of be fine(maybe you would ended up with a pancake flavord beer,ha-ha-ha). next time keep keep couple of pounds of DME in stock so you can "catch up" on your SG in case like that!
yes, most of the times we go over board with sanitation(iam not saying that a dirty fork in the wort is not a big deal)!