Didn't dump the Starsan from my bucket.... Need Technical Advise

Ok here's the back story...

So i think God is trying to tell me something about not brewing yesterday. Saturday night i'm making my yeast starter and I crack my erhlenmeyer flask while i'm sanitizing my starter wort. -$30 & i no longer have viable yeast


Today i realize when i milled my grain at the LHBS, i forgot to grab a pound of Crystal 40, and i'm thinking..."oh well, not a big deal." I get through the mash well and sparge went without a hitch. Got to the boil, finished with no issues, covered the pot and the chiller (not without turning on the hose and having the exit end spurt blazing hot water up into my face - nearly missing my eye) and letting it run while i go to the LHBS, grab the last two packs of 2112 for my beer and head back to the house.

Upon return to the house I get the wort chilled, and pitch and aerate the wort in the kettle prior to racking. I then attach my sanitized hose to the valve and open. After 2-3 gallons pour in a realize that I didn't dump the ~16-20oz of starsan out of the fermenter. Thankfully I had a second fermenter, dumped the starsan first, and then racked the remaining 3 gallons onto the 2nd fermenter. I then place the fermenters in the coldest room in the house. 4 hours later its at 86, 12 hours later its at 68. Unfortunately that's the best i can do when the ground water is 95.

My question posed is this. Other than the massive oversight (i blame heat and dehydration trying to brew while it's 110 outside) of not dumping out the starsan, i have heard that starsan eventually turns into yeast food. I'm pretty sure the yeast are dead in the first fermenter, but at what point does the starsan convert over and could i repitch yeast after the conversion to try and salvage the batch?

Hopefully my next brew day won't be such a cluster....

Starsan in it's normal dillution is perfectly safe to come into contact with your beer. In fact, you WANT it to. It was especially designed by it's creator to break down into yeast food- it's also good for your septic system, because of it.

Essentially it breaks down into many of the same compounds as softdrinks. People have racked their beer onto gallons of it and the beer's been fine. Several folks have drunk it even.

That's why we say, "don't fear the foam!" It's benign.

Yeah i've had the foam and suds in my beer all the time, but i had about a 1/4 gallon of it sitting in the bottom of the fermenter when i started racking. I think I "sanitized" all my yeast out because of the heavy concentration during the initial racking. I would think that before the chemical breaks down into yeast food that it would kill the yeast in its sanitizer form.

Anyone else done this before and what were your results? (i'm hoping i'm the only one because it's a full day and half a batch wasted)

cox8611 said:

Yeah i've had the foam and suds in my beer all the time, but i had about a 1/4 gallon of it sitting in the bottom of the fermenter when i started racking. I think I "sanitized" all my yeast out because of the heavy concentration during the initial racking. I would think that before the chemical breaks down into yeast food that it would kill the yeast in its sanitizer form.

Anyone else done this before and what were your results? (i'm hoping i'm the only one because it's a full day and half a batch wasted)

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Starsan doesn't kill yeast....It was designed for brewers.....Like I said, it breaks down and is consumed by it.

There's a lot of great info in this thread, including the links to podcasts about the two most effective sanitizers we use, iodophor and starsan. From their creators. Rather than engaging in idle speculation why don't you just check out the facts.

Sanitizer Question.

just quit now

Yeah probably should quit... but i'm not.

I got both fermenters in the same place, if they both ferment down to the FG and taste similarly, i'll be right there with Revvy telling people to "don't fear the foam - or 1/2 gallon" FWIW Revvy i hope you're right and then i'll have 7 gallons of excellent beer instead of only 3...

But my engineer mind won't accept someone telling me something if it doesn't seem logical until i see it for myself.

Cheers!

The issue is more likely that you had enough liquid to dilute your beer off the original recipe enough to change it. The StarSan part is not the issue. It's one of those mistakes I've yet to make, and likely won't because I only have it in a spray bottle. However I've made every other mistake and survived, like forgetting the 90 minute hop additions and tossing them in at 65 minutes.

Just a heads up, here:

Star-San DOES KILL YEAST in proper concentrations. It wouldn't be an effective sanitizer if it didn't-- if you think about it, you ideally want to kill off everything prior to adding any beer-related liquid into a container--inculding wild yeasts. Now, if your star san solution is diluted to a pH around 4 or so, it makes a great environment for it.

samc said:

The issue is more likely that you had enough liquid to dilute your beer off the original recipe enough to change it. The StarSan part is not the issue. It's one of those mistakes I've yet to make, and likely won't because I only have it in a spray bottle. However I've made every other mistake and survived, like forgetting the 90 minute hop additions and tossing them in at 65 minutes.

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I agree. A quart of starsan isn't a big deal. It's diluted so much that it isn't harmful. You just have a quart of extra water in there.

JoePro said:

Just a heads up, here:

Star-San DOES KILL YEAST in proper concentrations. It wouldn't be an effective sanitizer if it didn't-- if you think about it, you ideally want to kill off everything prior to adding any beer-related liquid into a container--inculding wild yeasts. Now, if your star san solution is diluted to a pH around 4 or so, it makes a great environment for it.

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Yeah that's what i'm afraid of - that it was in sufficient concentrations to kill it. at best i know i have a sanitary wort sitting in my closet, and if there is no activity i'll just make another starter and pitch from there in a couple days and see if i can get it cracking, once i feel that the starsan has converted to yeast food.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f14/re-using-blow-off-yeast-star-san-solution-results-259646/

Well, here's an interesting experiment I did a week or so ago-- it should give you some hope!

I would assume the starsan was diluted enough after the first gallon-ish of wort to let the rest of your yeast survive. I don't think you are going to have any issues.

Revvy said:

Several folks have drunk it even.

That's why we say, "don't fear the foam!" It's benign.

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i was one of those guys. i was all drunk one night and some guy was on here saying his wife was worried about there kids getting into a bucket of it or something. so i drank some and posted on here that i didn't die or get sick.

JoePro is correct. StarSan can kill yeast in the right concentrations, but I think some people are confused as to how it works.

Unlike many (but not all) other sanitizers (or pesticides and similar chemicals) it's not some sort of poisonous chemical that kills organisms through some sort of toxic effect. It works entirely due to the fact that it's an acid - the more highly concentrated it is, the lower the pH is (ie more acidic), and the more difficult it will be for organisms to survive in it. You could really use a solution of ANY acid, and if it's the same pH, it will be equally effective. There are some properties of Star San that make it a better choice than most other acids, but it has nothing to do with lethality or selectivity.

And that's also why there's absolutely no reason to fear the foam. It's not even slightly poisonous (unlike bleach or iodine). And when you get some already-diluted foam and dilute it even more with 5-10 gallons of wort, its going to have a pretty negligible effect on the overall pH. In fact, people drink the main component (phosphoric acid) all the time, as it's very commonly used to add a "bite" to sodas and flavored water.

It's difficult to tell how much of the yeast will be okay in this instance... but if you had all the precise measurements involved, you could get a good idea with a bit of math. I would probably repitch in this situation.

Of course, I would never be in this situation. Because I transfer the wort to my fermentor, and THEN pitch. I'm not sure why you pitch directly in the kettle, but I strongly recommend waiting until it's in the fermentor from now on — I can't think of any good reason for pitching first, but I can think of several reasons not too (including the fact that it allows a mistake like this to happen!)

Agreed, i started pitching prior to racking when i up'd my batch size to 10 gallons, and most of my other batches are ~7-8 gallons so it requires 2 fermenters and i don't want to split my starter.

I aerate with a paint mixer on the end of a drill, and pitching gets a thorough mix as well as aeration prior to racking into the fermenter. And trust me the SS in the bucket won't ever happen again, learnt me lesson.

The reason i stick to 7-8 gallon batches is that my sanke keggle works better with larger batches and it allows me to keg 5 gallons for me and 2 gallons to bottle to share with friends.

Just a quick update... I made a 2L starter of 2112 last night and will pitch it tonight when i get home from work. half into one starsan'd bucket, one into non-starsan'd bucket.

So far i have seen a little activity from the bucket with the starsan still in the bucket, but i also had low levels of starsan in the airlock to prevent any backpressure... i find when i have starsan in the airlock that the buckets develop a little pressure for some reason and the lid bows out slightly - which incidently ended up creating a small crack in my original bucket lid.

Will update with results...