You won't believe how I messed my brew up

I screwed up my brew in one of the dumbest ways possible this weekend.

I took the boiled wort down to my utility sink and started running cold water out of the faucet for the ice bath. While waiting for for the sink to fill, I turned away for about 5-10 seconds to show a friend my kegerator. When I turned back to the sink, the pot was laying on its side in the water

I guess it had started floating and somehow managed to flip over, even though the sink is barely wide enough for the height of the pot. Some of the wort flowed into the sink, and I'm sure some of the sink water made it into the pot. Unbelievable..

Do you think my beer is ruined? It's fermenting, but I'm ready to be disappointed once it's kegged.

Unless you had sanitized your utility sink beforehand (I wouldn't have) there is certainly a chance your batch is infected. However, nothing to do now but wait it out and take a sample after fermentation is over. If the yeast get going well enough they may trump any potential infection.

i did the same thing when i was teaching a few friends how to brew a few months ago...
it had just started to rain at flameout, so we were scrambling to get a lot of stuff in out of the rain while filling a giant ice-filled cooler with hose water when the brewpot floated and tipped... sucked a lot.
we didn't attempt to ferment the mess, so i can't give any firsthand advice on that...
good luck.

Yeah I plan to wait it out and hope for the best. It looks like fermentation is proceeding as expected, so maybe I'll get lucky.

watch it be the best you have ever tasted....
JJ

Yeah, and you could call it Sink Seasoned Ale or SSA.

or how about "Everything but the kitchen sink Ale"

Kitchen's in the Sink Ale errr.... Sink's in the Kitchen Ale....ehhh...

Would he have been able to put it back on the stove and boil it again?

Tommy

You couldn't boil it again- after all, he had already added all the hops at the right times and was in the process of cooling it.

Hopefully all you did was dilute your wort a bit. If it's infected, you'll know soon enough. This might be a great beer- one you won't be able to recreate!

Lorena

Or you could call it " Sink or Float Ale "

add a scoop of iceream and you will have a utility sink float

Hah.. It's still fermenting nicely, so maybe I'll get lucky.

Will give an update when I try it

lorenae said:

You couldn't boil it again- after all, he had already added all the hops at the right times and was in the process of cooling it.

Hopefully all you did was dilute your wort a bit. If it's infected, you'll know soon enough. This might be a great beer- one you won't be able to recreate!

Lorena

Click to expand...

What?
of course he could boil it again.
it wouldn't be recommended to boil it for an hour and re-hop it or anything crazy like that, but getting it to a rolling boil for another 5 minutes to get the wort sterile is not an unreasonable idea. then he could give cooling another try -- maybe with more attention to the water level outside the pot.
the extra 5 minutes of boiling certainly wouldn't affect the hop profile & flavor of the beer more than an infection would...

Well it's been in conditioning in the carboy for a week and it's extremely hazy.. probably not good for an american pilsner, eh? I'm planning to dump it and chalk the whole thing up to experience

You can tell it's hazy by looking through the carboy? Wow. I can't tell anything if I just look through the carboy. Give it the appropriate times and bottle it. It should be fine.

If it's hazy, it's probably not because of the problem with the sink. It's probably just doing some clearing.

A pilsner? What yeast did you use and what are your ferment temps?

Don't feel bad- I once lost a brew years ago in a similar fashion. It was one of my first brews, and it was wintertime, so I stuck the brewpot in a snowbank to cool it. Well, as the pot cooled, it melted the snow, and then tipped over and almost all the wort spilled out. The neigborhood critters loved it though. It wasn't long after that that I got a wort chiller. One of the best brewing purchases I ever made.