Bottling Almost-Accident! & Q

[tuckertonrr]

Well, I got everything cleaned & sanitized to bottle some Caribou Slobber I had sitting in the glass carboy for 3 weeks, mixed in the sugar water, turned on the spigot at the bottom & wooooosh! A huge leak in the gasket! I tried filling a few bottles, and figured, well, this isn't going to work.

Since all the bottles were sitting already cleaned/sanitized, I figured, what the heck? No other way - so I just dunked them in till full & capped.

Would there have been any other reasonable way to handle this situation? And what is the risk for infection for doing this? I don't wanna end up with a whole bad batch!!

Any replies are most welcome!

Now to get a new gasket.....

 

[JonM]

Only time will tell. If the bottles were sanitized inside and out, you might be in good shape. But ... did you get your fingers in the beer while dunking?

I had the exact same thing happen a couple years ago. Like a complete dope, I starsaned my arm and stuck it in there to fix the gasket. The whole batch got infected. Had I let the leak go and just bottled, I might have lost 3? 4? 6? bottles to the leak. Instead, I lost the whole batch.

Anyway, live and learn. Yours might be just fine. Like I did, I bet you've learned to double and triple check that gasket before bottling, eh?

 

[tuckertonrr]

Only time will tell. If the bottles were sanitized inside and out, you might be in good shape. But ... did you get your fingers in the beer while dunking?

Yep, didn't even think of "sanitizing" my hands. Just washed with dish detergent & water & went for it. Damn....Now I'm scared!! Hopefully the alcohol will kill off any bad bacteria?

I tried wrapping some old cloth around the gasket area, to no avail. It was dripping something fierce!

Anyway, live and learn. Yours might be just fine. Like I did, I bet you've learned to double and triple check that gasket before bottling, eh?

When I sanitized the bucket, I didn't really even pay attention to whether there was a leak or not. Now to order some extra gaskets for it!

Wish me luck!

 

[MapleGroveAleworks]

Yeah there's really no way to know. You're probably fine, especially if you aren't planning on aging them.

 

[Osborne]

Also keeping them all cold will help, and like the poster above said don't age them.

 

[mongoose33]

I have a spigot on both a big mouth bubbler and my bottling bucket. I fill both with enough Star-San solution to fill well past the spigot and then check for leaks.

 

[Firewalker11]

I just bottled my batch last week, sorry to hear about your trouble. Duct tape works to slow a leak too. I would have bottled right there from the leaking spigot.

Go have a home brew, time will tell.