Should I throw out the batch?

I started a batch quite some time ago (10 months) transferred to 2ndary after about a month (very active in primary the entire time). Summer came, and I stopped brewing (I was very busy this summer) and kind of forgot about it. The primary was a 15 gallon carboy (thank you, dad) and was therefore split between 3 seondary's. 2 of them were perfectly fine, but the 3rd (and the fullest), the airlock dried out on.

I was thinking I may as well just chuck it, but I decided to give it a whiff, and smelled just like the other two carboys (that i just bottled). I now have it upstairs, and have an airlock on it, and it's started bubbling again (I think it might have been a bit too cold to ferment properly in the basement).

so to recap:
Reasons to think it's safe:
active primary (high alcohol content - alcohol would kill anything)
smells good
actively fermenting now

reasons to think it's NOT safe:
airlock was dry when I found it after ~9 months... don't know HOW LONG it was dry
basement's not exactly the cleanest place in the world... lots of mold spores Im sure.

Thoughts? Should I bottle and proceed with caution, or cut my losses and pour it out?

All indications point to bottling. Unless it had some obvious fungal or bacterial growth that was way out there, if it looks, smells, and tastes good, go for it!

Any post that starts out with "Should I throw out..." needs to have the automatic answer of NO NO NO don't throw it out. If it smells OK, that's a good sign. Since fermentation seems to be going on, give it some time to see if you get any strange "Jesus" looking mold on the top If no mold, take a sample and check with hydro to see where you ended up and taste the sample. If all seems well, go ahead & bottle. The most you'll lose is about an hour of your time but you stand to gain another case or so of good beer.

I had the same thing happen to a mead which i had in secondary for 10 months. at some point in that 10 months the airlock dried out. It also was living in my basement. Regardless, I bottled the mead a month ago and it is absolutely excellent. No worries.

If fact it was that single question that lead me to seek out this board!

Have you tasted it?

Orpheus said:

All indications point to bottling.

Click to expand...

I agree, although it looks like Orph has the Homebrewer's Magic 8 Ball answer.

Other answers for the Magic 8 Ball Brewer's Edition.
Take a gravity reading.
RDWHAHB!
Give it a few weeks.

Heh, that's pretty funny. You could just make a list and roll dice to see which answer you get too.

After 9 months (or whatever) if it was going to get infected, it would have. With nothing weird visible & it smelling like beer:

It's beer!