Dropped Thief In Carboy (fermentor) :/ munson

quickly searched for this, but didn't bring anything up!

i was using this lil' guy for the bijillionth time (each time i used it i wondered why i hadn't dropped it in yet). after downing a shakespeare stout it finally happened. it slipped from my fingers and plummeted to the bottom.

dropped it into the can you brew it dead guy clone, on the fourth day in primary using san diego super yeast wlp090. og was 1.068 and krausen fell after the second day, but the airlock is still bubbling periodically and the surface has some rafts but it's looking fairly clear with a few surface bubbles here and there.

so i thought i'd see where it's at and check the sg ... it's at 1.021. still a little high, and i wonder how much lower it could go at this point (first time using this yeast). i pitched a stepped starter from 1L to 2L according to yeast calc to pitch more than enough yeast, and it started in less than 3 hours. the sample tasted great, though a bit of residual sweetness that dead guy doesn't have. would be nice to come down a few points.

getting off topic here ... what should i do? my thoughts are:

– i sanitized the thief pretty well with star san as i always do. i should just forget about it and leave it on the cake for another week or two or three

– i really munsoned, i should rack it to a secondary now and just live with the sweetness.

– i should rack everything immediately, yeast and all to another carboy and get it away from the contaminated thief

– at this point it is what it is and by the time i get a reply it won't matter to rack it, the damage is done, i should just leave it for another couple of weeks.

thoughts?

p.s. also, what thief should i get so this never happens again?

p.s.s. i was also planning on rinsing this yeast for future batches. is that now a bad idea?

I'd just leave it in there. The damage (minimal, imo) is already done, all you can do is make it worse.

I just got a glass turkey baster for pulling samples. I use a refractometer, so I don't need much, but with three or four pulls, you could easily fill a hydrometer tube. This is the one I got (I have amazon prime, so the shipping was free). Just get one of these, it's easier than a stupid wine thief, and won't leak as much. I hate my wine thief. The valve always gets gummed up with yeast and won't close when I try to pull it out.

thanks for the vote of confidence. i was slightly bummed when it happened, but thought that it probably wasn't a huge deal considering it's already pretty alcoholic and i sanitized it well.

getting a thief like that baster, that isn't even possible to fall into a carboy is a good call.

as far as rinsing and reusing this yeast – still okay? or is that one step too far?

If the beer tastes good, then do whatever you want.

I would just leave it in there and try to retrieve it later. I had one of those and they are flimsy as hell so hopefully it stays in one piece by the time you get it out.

So this beer has been in bottles for 3 weeks now, was in primary for 2.5 weeks. I just left the thief in there and poured it out after racking to the bottling bucket.

I had one of the beers after two weeks, and it was decent, probably needed some more time. But so far I don't see any negative effects from dropping the thief in – thankfully my sanitation was alright.