I nearly puked!!!

so last night i bottled my annual spruce porter recipe. in an effort to harvest as much of my beer as i could, i placed the fermenter lid under the edge of the fermenter to tilt it back a bit. well if you haven't figured it out yet, the inevitable happened. unfortunately i dropped the lid into my bottling bucket using a sterilized spoon i managed to ladle out several dog hairs and a couple of dead gnats. anyone else had an experience like this? did you end up with infected beer? it makes me sick to think about having to pitch the batch, especially with elk season(the ultimate purpose of this batch)coming up.

RDWHAHB

Ive seen stories of way more horrific things dropped into beer that turned out fine. Look at the bright side, the elk will taste delicious.

You'll probably be fine. Yes, you may eventually get an infection that's noticeable, but if you drink it quick enough, there shouldn't be a problem.

The acid and alcohol content will kill most stuff before it grows, and the common infections (lacto, pedio, aceto) take time to develop.

Fermentation is over and the beer is finished, Microbs love sugar and now most of that is alcohol, the hops make it acid, most microbes do not grow in this. The point of beer way back in the day, is if you drank beer (not water) you would not die from dysentery. You will be fine, you can name this beer "hair of the dog"

I'm always amazed at just how hard it is to mess up beer. It's when you do everything perfectly right that things go bad it seems. Beer is pretty resilient and fights the good fight.

thanks for the quick responses. hopefully infection does not set in as i was hoping to have it around till the end of hunting season in late october. you guys have given me some peace of mind though. thanks

I found a Japanese beetle in my Wit this weekend as I was racking it into a keg. Must have gone in on brew day....he had sunk into into the yeast.

i teabag every brew i make
just joking
hell, as long as it's not blatant mold dumped into the beer or spoonfulls of rotted meat, i think you're good :cheers: