forgot to re-lid

Has anyone pulled a sample from their fermenter and forgotten to reseal the lid? I did it two days ago and today I came home to a pretty stinky house. It took me a few minutes to figure out where the odor was coming from – after emptying the garbage and the kitchen compost. So now I'm wondering if the batch is okay. Fermentation was/is complete, so there's lots of alcohol in there. Anyone else done this? Should I go ahead and bottle and hope for the best?

It should be fine. The nasties can't lift the lid to get in.

It will be fine.

But really, does your fermentation smell? I have never noticed any smell from fermentation, and neither has my hyper-sensitive wife.

sudsmcgee said:

It should be fine. The nasties can't lift the lid to get in.

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+1 if fermentation was complete and was covered.. just not sealed, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

BetterSense said:

It will be fine.

But really, does your fermentation smell? I have never noticed any smell from fermentation, and neither has my hyper-sensitive wife.

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Depends on the yeast and the vigor with which it ferments. With a lot of yeasts I definitely know beer is being made when I walk in the room... On occasion it means my airlock clogged and I've got some foam to clean up

BetterSense said:

It will be fine.

But really, does your fermentation smell? I have never noticed any smell from fermentation, and neither has my hyper-sensitive wife.

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Seriously? Not even hop aroma?

I have a wheat I brewed Sunday morning bubbling nicely in one of my fridges downstairs and I can smell hops mixed with a yeasty note a good 20 feet away...

Cheers!

Thanks for the feedback. I should have mentioned that the lid was not only unsealed, it wasn't covering the entire bucket. I had moved it aside to take the sample and never moved it back.

I don't usually smell my fermenting beer unless I get close to the airlock –*But in this case, yes, it smelled quite a bit. It's a Pumpkin Ale, so I'm not that surprised.

it wasn't covering the entire bucket

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a tub of beer sitting at room temperature for two days, uncovered, is not a good thing.

is it definately bad? i cant say that.

should you be extremely suspicious of an infection of some sort? yes.

audger, is there any way to tell if it's infected? And if so, is there anything that I can do with it... aside from dumping it?

If it forms a pellicle or shows mold spores, you'll know it's infected for sure, but not all infections/bugs/problems have visual tells.

There's a presumption in favour of a beer turning out, so bottle and maybe put it in a rubbermaid bin in case something got to it and overcarbonates the bottles. Leaving the lid off when fermentation is complete isn't certainly the best way to brew beer but that doesn't mean you should throw out all hope and think about dumping it.

I wouldn't be worrying about infections. If it was mine I'd cold crash and then bottle or keg asap.

Is this a pellicle I see before me? I can't remember what the surface of the beer looked like when I opened it up, but this looks more like krausen to me. It's a beige-ish color and slimy, the same as what's sticking to the sides of the fermenter. I've got it cold-crashing right now and plan to bottle it tomorrow. Anyone think I'm nuts?

What's the worst that could happen? seriously, what could happen?

That uncovered lid sounds scary but I would bet on success more than failure. Watch for obvious mold, bad cloudiness or bad smell.

I did have a wild yeast get into a batch while I was dry hopping. I assumed that it was during the dry hop because I had two carboys from the same batch and only dry hopped one. The beer looked great but had a nasty plastic taste. I got into Papazian's book and he mentioned "phenolic" taste or something that tastes like bandaids. That is where the wild yeast theory came from. I can drink it if I am really craving a beer and have nothing else. I've kept a couple of bottles for fellow beer fans to taste and get familiar with what can go wrong.

I just saw that photo. I want to hear what others say. Does it smell like beer or musty/moldy or rotten? It doesn't look right to me.....The worst that could happen? Never head of anyone getting really sick like with bad lettuce or cantalope.

It should be fine... over preasure should keep a lot of stuff out and in the olden days they did not have all the same sanitation we do and they made good beer.

BUT..

If you open a bottle or pull some from the keg and you suspect it is going bad... DRINK IT FAST!