Water dripped in to my Fementor! Oops!

So, last night I thought I would take a peek at my stout as the activity in the air lock has stopped. So I removed the fementor from the large troth of water it has been in since fermentation started. I had a t-shirt drapped over the bucket to wick water over the top of the bucket. Well this obviously left water on top of the lid. I didn't see the water until it was too late. Some of it dripped down into the bucket of beer as I pulled the lid off the bucket. This water was obviously not sanitized, or really even clean by this point, as I had never even bothered to clean the large utility bucket before I used it, and a fan had been blowning air at the bucket since last Thursday.

Should I be preparing for the worst at this point? My hydro started at 1.055 and was at 1.022 last night. So fermentation has got a good hold and there should be alcohol to kill most nasties, but I'm still concerned that I may have runied this batch.

If you want to see what your yeast is up to, I would suggest investing in a Better Bottle. Since they are clear, you can check on kraeusen level, flocculation, beer clarity, etc. without ever removing the lid.

If water that was stagnant for a week dripped into your beer, it was probably full of nasties. You'll probably still be ok because of the alcohol, but I'd give the beer plenty of time to age before bottling to make sure you don't have some sort of infection that's slow to take hold.

If water that was stagnant for a week dripped into your beer, it was probably full of nasties. You'll probably still be ok because of the alcohol, but I'd give the beer plenty of time to age before bottling to make sure you don't have some sort of infection that's slow to take hold.

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I'm of the opposite frame of mind. Just treat it normally until you have evidence indicating otherwise. People have done much worse than drip some t-shirt water into their beer, with no repercussions.

Don't worry about it. I once dripped dirty dishwater into my bottling bucket, full of primed IPA. There's only one bottle left and it was great.

oh no! WATER Everybody run!!! We're gonna die!!

kidding...your beer is alcoholic now and a lot of the bacteria in those drops probably were killed by the alcohol. At least thats what I tell myself when minor things like this occur

Don't forget that the hops will help kill just about anything that the alcohol did not.

An idea that works for me is to use sterilized water in my "swamp cooler". I notice with non sterilized water my primary begins to get a little moldy around the outside after a week or two.

Thanks for the reassurances. I will proceed as usual or until something indicates I should do otherwise.

imprez25 said:

Thanks for the reassurances. I will proceed as usual or until something indicates I should do otherwise.

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just so you know you're not alone

I think in commercial breweries the official term they use for when nasty water gets dropped into the fermentor is "Miller High Life".

"Damn, I Miller High Lifed it again".

triggerman72 said:

I think in commercial breweries the official term they use for when nasty water gets dropped into the fermentor is "Miller High Life".

"Damn, I Miller High Lifed it again".

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I thought it was their "third hop addition."