possible off flavor noticed when checking gravity?

went to dry hop/check gravity today. i gave the brew a smell and noticed a good amount of boozy smell, almost like rubbing alcohol. i never noticed this much before, at least not as prominent. fermentation was kept around 66 and i pitched with us-05. gravity showed fermentation was generally complete, with an FG 1.010 after 11 days. since fermentation was kept at a lower temp, im having a hard time finding the boozy smell issue. maybe its fine, im not sure, but in either situation i got some questions-

this is kinda of a split question post.
first, during the cooling of my wort on brewday i forgot to remove the hop bags that were in the boil until the wort was about 110 degrees. usually i remove them soon after i kill the heat. i removed the bags at about 110 and let the remaining wort from the bags drip back into the kettle, some minor splashing. is this bad? i think i read somewhere you should not be splashing the wort in anyway during this part of cooling, at least not untill its under 80 degrees. possible off flavor from this?

next, after dry hopping/checking gravity today i put the sanitized lid and airlock back on the fermenter. i went to dump some water in the airlock and realized i was missing the piece on the airlock that lids the airway, hence i dumped about a shot of water into the fermenter before i realized the piece was sitting next to me in sanitizer. dumping a shot of water into fermenter after fermentation....bad?

i realize these are somewhat newbie mistakes and i should just RDWHAHB, but just looking for opinions on these mistakes and the possible off flavor booze smell, cheers..

I don't know much about the first two parts, but regarding the question about getting a little bit of water in the beer after fermentation...I'd say there's nothing wrong with that. Lots of people actually start their siphon to rack to secondary or bottling by filling the siphon tube with water. This saves them from putting lips on the tube and lowers the risk of 'infection' that much more. If you consider a tube full of water to rack to secondary and another to bottle...your shot or water is no bid deal.

I'd like to read the answer to stirring during cooling though. I stir while using an immersion chiller and never really paid much attention to aeration. Perhaps I should pay attention to this???

aeration before pitching yeast is good. don't worry about any of that you said

What's your recipe?

Boozy smells can often be a result of high OG beers coupled with too high fermentation temperatures.

@ lumpher- wouldnt my situation be more of a case of HSA? im still not sure if HSA is myth or fact.

@Homebrewtastic- abv on this ipa should come out to about 6.5%. i recently just brewed a IIPA that was around 8% and didnt notice any booziness. temperature was controlled at 64 and pushed up to 66-68 after 5 days for both beers...

anybody else?

Are you possibly confusing a carbon dioxide whiff with boozy smell? When you open the fermenter and take a sniff it will almost knock you off your feet if you get too close to the top of the fermenter.

RM-MN said:

Are you possibly confusing a carbon dioxide whiff with boozy smell? When you open the fermenter and take a sniff it will almost knock you off your feet if you get too close to the top of the fermenter.

Click to expand...

i never thought of that, you might be right...

Ta' heck with the nose, how was the taste? I only ask this because the alcohols are more volital than water, and can be in the head space easier. So you might have had them traped there until you openned the bucket. If the taste seemed ok, then I'd bet it was just a build up of volitals.

as for the water dropping in, as long as everthing was 'reasonable clean' then you should be fine. While there is crap on everything we have, most stuff fresh from the dishwasher/cupboard are clean enough, and it is unlikely that you introduced enough if any infection.

Yes --> RDWHAHB

Everything you described sounds okay. It's not the end of the world. If it tastes funky after conditioning or kegging then you can start worrying a little bit.

hot side aeration is not a factor if there is healthy fermentation