I goofed - what happens now?

So I was brewing a Mountain Kolsch Ale this weekend while watching the kids and got distracted (big mistake). I wound-up siphoning the entire batch from the boil pot into the primary - leftover hops junk and all. I already pitched the yeast and closed the bucket before I realized what I had done and I didn't have anymore yeast to fix the problem... so I left it go.

I put the primary in the basement to ferment and was wondering what's going to happen to the beer? My first thought was that since the hops were already broken down and since the beer had cooled, it probably won't hurt the beer - just be cloudy which I can clear up in the secondary. But after this blunder - I wanted to know what you guys think...

Thanks,
Adam

There's no harm done with all that junk in the beer. It sounds to me like you didn't cool the wort before you added the yeast though. If you cooled the wort before pitching the yeast you will be fine.

Many of us dump everything, hops trub and all from the kettle right into the fermentor...It will all settle out and/or be left behind when you rack. YOr beer will be fine.

From what I understand some people don't bother siphoning the wort at all and go ahead and just dump the whole thing in. That's what I did for my most recent and previous brew and everything seems on track and perfectly fine. The stuff from the bottom of the pot will settle out well before the yeast does.

The hops are pretty much exhausted at this point, so other than being a pain when you siphon to bottle you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

You will be fine, a lot of people do it that way on purpose. You'll have more trub than you normally do, but it should compact down.

So I hope you realize that you didn't goof...what you did was brewer's choice.

But you can also obviously strain before going into primary as well...it's really a matter of choice. If you are fermenting in a bucket a 5 gallon nylon paint bucket strainer bag works great. Just sanitize it ahead of times..

And don't worry about mistakes, you will find your beer is very forgiving...

Here's some examples of our screwups where the beer came out fine!

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

Thanks for the quick response. I did cool the beer and it was 67 degrees when I pitched the yeast. I guess I can wipe the tear from my eye and have another homebrew!

ahansen said:

Thanks for the quick response. I did cool the beer and it was 67 degrees when I pitched the yeast. I guess I can wipe the tear from my eye and have another homebrew!

Click to expand...

Another citizen saved gentlemen! Onwards and upwards to the next project! SHAZZAM!!