Knocked the Air lock and Plug out!

I'm on day 6 of a very active fermentation (the yeast is starting to settle to the bottom. the yeast still has about 1/2 inch of foam on top of the wort). Anyway, I was in the closet getting a towel and knocked the airlock and plug out. It was open air for like 15 seconds. My concern is that I just reacted and stuck the plug back on with out sanitizing it. there is a good 1/2 foot of space between the beer and the plug at the top of the carboy. should I pull it out and sanitize or just leave it?

You're probably fine, since there is a blanket of oxygen on top of the wort you probably won't get any type of infection. You can resanitize it if you want just to be safe. If I ever question whether I need to sanitize something..............I just do it just in case.

You're fine we take our lids of for gravity readings even longer than that, and we've all had complete bucket blowoffs, and our beers survive. Iowan is almost right, your beer is protected by a layer, but it's co2 and not oxygen.

Watch these videos of one of my beers...that came out fine.

Besides the formentioned at day 6 you probably have a high enough alcohol content to kill off anything that sneaks in. This is my understanding anyway.

I had a hefe blowout last spring and I didn't get it re-capped for several hours. The beer turned out fine, but I think there is still krausen falling off the ceiling in that closet. I'd invest in some blowoff setups, they're cheap and prevent blowouts.

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mrduna01 said:

Besides the formentioned at day 6 you probably have a high enough alcohol content to kill off anything that sneaks in. This is my understanding anyway.

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I've seen this stated several times lately. It decreases the likelihood but it doesn't prevent contamination. If it did then there would be no reason to sanitize bottles or kegs. We're making beer here not rubbing alcohol.

rjwhite41 said:

I've seen this stated several times lately. It decreases the likelihood but it doesn't prevent contamination. If it did then there would be no reason to sanitize bottles or kegs. We're making beer here not rubbing alcohol.

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Point taken. . But I guess even practicing good sanitation habits only reduces the likely hood with there always being a chance of a stray getting in there.

mrduna01 said:

Point taken. . But I guess even practicing good sanitation habits only reduces the likely hood with there always being a chance of a stray getting in there.

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I agree completely. I just don't want people thinking that the alcohol in their beer is preventing contamination because that just isn't true and it seems to be repeated in a lot of the threads I'm reading lately.

rjwhite41 said:

I agree completely. I just don't want people thinking that the alcohol in their beer is preventing contamination because that just isn't true and it seems to be repeated in a lot of the threads I'm reading lately.

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You said it better than I as in it reduces the likelihood, but doesn't eliminate it. This is a solid point.

Thanks for catching my misinformation there Revvy, I meant CO2, but was thinking of something else while I was typing. Thinking of keg stuff and bleeding the oxygen off of the keg after using CO2..........

Thank you all for the info. I figured I was fine but the nerves kept whispering at me to double check.