Is my beer going to be ruined?

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Skillafizer

Goibhniu's Apprentice
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So I'm in the process of trying to brew a recipe I received from one of the many cool people on this site. I live in an apartment but brew at my parents' house. Two nights ago I had brew day, which went fine so far as I can tell. Yesterday night, my fellow brewer's (dad) SWMBO noticed that the runoff tubing I had in a cup of sanitizer had somehow fallen out of the sanitizer and was sitting on the table where the carboy is.

When I found this out and checked on it personally, I found a decent bit of trub on the outside of the carboy and a little bit of wort in the runoff tubing (my mom had put the tube back in the sanitizer). I have now put an airlock filled with sanitizer on the carboy to replace the tubing, but the beer doesn't seem to be doing much.

My question is, is my beer going to turn out alright? I know cleanliness and sanitation is a highly important aspect of brewing so I'm not sure if the beer will actually ferment properly (it doesn't really look like it fermented all that much to begin with and doesn't have any bubbling going on now) and end up turning out alright.
 
Hard telling. Know that sounds like a cop-out, but there are tons of variables. Odds are you'll be fine, if it was caught quickly, sounds like the yeast took hold and did their thing, I wouldn't let it keep me up at night.
 
So your blow-off tube fell out of the sanitizer and active fermentation came out the tube? If that is the case, I wouldn't worry about oxidation too much.
Did you get the original gravity, yeast amount and temperature when you pitched? What temp was it fermenting at?
Answers to these questions will help the diagnosis.
 
I'd say you'll probably be OK. During the active phase of fermentation, the flow through the blow-off tube is out because she is producing a lot of CO2. So, even if the end of the tube was not submerged, there's a slim chance that contaminating organisms could march up the tube into your beer. After the CO2 outgassing is finished, that's when I would be a little more worried about contamination through the tube. Sounds like you caught it early enough. :mug:
 
I would go so far as to say that you have nothing to worry about. Any bacteria or wild yeast cannot fly. There is little chance they could navigate their way up the blow off tube.
Also during the fermentation co2 is being produced thus there would be gas pressure coming out of the tube.

Also the pressure would keep air out so oxidation is not likely either.

Depending on the yeast and the temperature fermentation could be very quick. Too warm = too quick and a risk of off flavors.

I feel you have nothing at all to worry about from what we know so far.
 
You're making some assumptions there. The OP's parents might be divorced and Dad's SWMBO may not be his mom.

I think it's a reasonable assumption that if the Mom and Dad live together (and we know that because OP's Mom fix the blowoff tube) that "SWMBO" = Mom.

Anyway, I agree with others who have said this is very likely to be a non-issue because of slow but steady flow of CO2 through the tube. Infections do not swim against the air current.
 
Back on topic, yeast and bacteria don't climb. However, macroorganisms that carry them CAN climb (like fruit flies). It sounds like you caught it quickly and are more than likely just fine, but I would keep an eye on it.
 
They're easy enough to see. Look in the fermenter. Do you see bugs floating in it?? If not then you're OK

EDIT: I'm pretty sure that the time it would take a fruit fly to go up the tube it would die from CO2. Depends on how quickly it could get up there though(it can't fly through the tube) and if it was still in the primary fermentation phase.
 
Back on topic, yeast and bacteria don't climb. However, macroorganisms that carry them CAN climb (like fruit flies). It sounds like you caught it quickly and are more than likely just fine, but I would keep an eye on it.

Unfortunately microbial colonies can and do form on the internal aspects of tubing if given the chance. Gravity is of zero relevance to the formation and development of these biofilms.

Is your beer ruined. I doubt this issue will have any bearing on the final outcome. I would have no concerns. Sounds like the minor hiccup was remedied in quick fashion.

Relax ..etc..homeberew
 
Unfortunately microbial colonies can and do form on the internal aspects of tubing if given the chance. Gravity is of zero relevance to the formation and development of these biofilms.

Is your beer ruined. I doubt this issue will have any bearing on the final outcome. I would have no concerns. Sounds like the minor hiccup was remedied in quick fashion.

Relax ..etc..homeberew

Right, but inside the tubing isn't the problem, it's inside the beer that is the the problem. Now part of it might be romanticization, but the swan neck bottle experiment done by Pasteur demonstrates the concept. That is, unless something else that can climb all the way through. Which, as said, if you don't see any bugs inside (because they'd probably not be able to find their way back out) you're probably fine.
 
The microbes can breed in the tubing but can they find their way into to beer from that point? No, they're separated from the beer by the headspace of the fermenter. I don't think most of them could breed in the CO2 environment of the tubing anyway.
 
As long as there was active fermentation coming out of the tube, and the tube was put back into the sanitizer as soon as the little hiccup was noticed, I wouldn't sweat it. I've had some crazy fermentations pop my blow off tube out of the top of my carboy a couple of different times and my beer still turned out fine. Keep calm and brew on. :mug:
 
While we're at it, I've had a fermenter pop a lid and not catch it for 48 hours, and it's been fine. So don't think there's an issue until there's an issue.
 
Right, but inside the tubing isn't the problem, it's inside the beer that is the the problem. Now part of it might be romanticization, but the swan neck bottle experiment done by Pasteur demonstrates the concept. That is, unless something else that can climb all the way through. Which, as said, if you don't see any bugs inside (because they'd probably not be able to find their way back out) you're probably fine.

I agree. I think we over think these things as home brewers and the forum allows us time to vent these OCD thoughts. Beer is essentially designed with rendering microbe-laden water safe to drink. The making it delicious and flavoursome in the process is a nice added benefit hence it's great history. I completely agree that a bit of tubing exposed to the world for a while doesn't mean the nasties come marching into the beer and destroying it.

I simply was somewhat gently rebutting the climbing notion from a microbial standpoint. As you rightly describe, the swan-neck device is aimed at eliminating ingress of microbe lade particulate. A far more relevant issue at hand for the timescales involved.

Edit: Not to mention open fermentations which are still oft practiced by many a brewery on a commercial scale. @passedpawn shows a great one in one of his threads from the Fuschein brewery in Dusseldorf. (spelling ?)
 
To clarify for everyone, my parents are still together. It might only be because my dad works 11 months of the year overseas :p

My SSWMBO (Super-SWMBO?) AKA mom caught it about 24 hours after I put it down in the basement to ferment. So it could have been sitting out for up to a day. I'm glad to see the general consensus is that my beer won't have been ruined, but I still had a question regarding the trub. My first brew (the one I'm cold crashing today - the beer in question is only my second attempt at homebrewing ever) actively fermented for a couple days, this one must've been only a day, if that. Is the less active fermentation phase more likely due to the type of beer and yeast rather than the tube coming out? And it just seems to me that there is less trub in this one than the first - much of it is on the outside of the carboy somehow rather than the inside, and maybe that's why it looks like there's less, but I wasn't sure if what seems like less trub to me might be indicative of less or ineffective fermentation.

To answer one of the earlier comments, the basement temp is ambient at 68-70, and my OG was 1.042.
 
Ill go as far as to say youre going to have a tasty beverage. The amount of trub in two different beers is not an indication of anything. Different recipes are going to have different fermentations espically with different yeasts. Lots of variables to discuss and I am probably not the best one to get into them. Let us know how it turns out.
 
Thanks, I'll try to remember to update y'all on the outcome. Also, just realized I'm using trub and krausen interchangeably but have no idea if they're technically the same thing. Sorry if they're not and what I've been saying is thus confusing.
 
Thanks, I'll try to remember to update y'all on the outcome. Also, just realized I'm using trub and krausen interchangeably but have no idea if they're technically the same thing. Sorry if they're not and what I've been saying is thus confusing.

Kräusen can mean a few things, but all tied to active fermentation. It's either the layer of yeast (and protein and other compounds) that gathers atop the fermentation during its active stages (and what comes out the blowout tube) and then drops down, or it's actively fermenting beer added to fully fermented beer for carbonation (old German way of naturally carbonating).

Trub is the sludge that collects at the bottom. Trub will be in both the kettle and the fermenter. It's mostly protein matter, but some folks group hop matter or even yeast matter in with the term.

Overlap is that once the kräusen drops to the bottom, one could refer to it as part of the trub.
 
Thanks, Qhrumphf. I'm in the middle of reading Palmer's How To Brew right now but many of the terms are still foreign to me.
 
Yes. Eventually all beer is ruined. It is consumed, filtered by the kidneys, liver and pancreas and turned into urine. The solution is to make more beer.
 
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