Air exposure - is my beer ruined?

[CessnaDriver]

Hi all -

I brewed a batch of nut brown ale yesterday and put the wort in a 6.5 gallon carboy with a rubber cork and a hose in the cork for blow off.

After I got the fermenter situated in the bathtub, I left the house for about two hours. When I came back home, I discovered that the cork slipped off of the carboy leaving the wort exposed. Luckily its in a bathroom that's never used, and the shower curtain was closed, so there probably wasn't much air moving around.

The beer was fermenting great this morning and bubbles were coming out in the water in the over flow bucket at a rate of 1-2 per second.

Is there a high chance that the beer may be ruined? My neighbors have high expectations for this batch!

Thanks

 

[Revvy]

It takes a lot more oxygen exposure of our beer to cause any damage, than what we do in the normal course of our brewing AND in most of the boneheaded mistakes we make(including using our autosiphon like a hand pump if it gets stuck) or typical bubbles in the lines.

Or having the blow off tube knocked out.

In a basic brewing podcast years ago, one of the big wigs, John Palmer, or Chris Colby (the editor of BYO) said that the amount of oxygen to actually damage our beer, is actually far in excess of what we do in the normal course of brewing and even most of our accidents. And requires about the amount of oxygen that we could pump in by emptying one of our red oxygen bottles with an airstone into our bottling bucket....not the normal amount of motion we make if we are careful brewers.

Also the effects of oxydation are long term they affect the storage of beers...Unless you pumped an oxygen bottle into your finished beer, you will have consumed your two cases of beer long before any signs of oxydation would show up.

So don't stress out about that...try to avoid it, but don't freak out !

 

[CessnaDriver]

Whew, thanks! I thought the risk was that airborne yeast would get into the wort so I was more worried about that.

The nut brown should go well with cigars, so I am sure it will be consumed quickly in our neighborhood.

I love your avatar!!