Coffee mug broke in my wort

[nikkuchan]

Hello all. This is a story of my stupidity. I was brewing a new batch this morning, and everything was going normally. When I got to adding the LME, I add it as I always do (pour it out, then ladle some of the hot water into the LME container using a coffee mug, swish it around, pour, repeat), and nothing was going any different than usual. I never thought anything of using a ceramic coffee mug to ladle hot water since I regularly pour boiling water into it for tea, but now I won't be doing this anymore. I was ladling like normal, and about the third time I went to ladle some water, I dunked nearly the whole mug in the water (I usually only submerge it just enough to get a little water), and... physics... about a second after I took the mug out there was a sploosh and wort splashed all over. WTF? It took me a couple more seconds to realize the bottom of the mug was missing, so I fished out the piece that fell in. It was a clean break; I didn't notice any small shards or anything. Regardless, I didn't want to dump my beer, so I just continued. Now my beer is fermenting away, and though I'm not really worried, I wonder how harmful this would be to drink if there were teeny little ceramic shards in the beer.

Oh well. I think I'll use an actual ladle from now on.

 

[poptarts]

they should fall out in primary, i wouldn't think much of it personally.

 

[C-Rider]

Or a measuring cup. If you are at all worried just strain the wort. Most likely nothing will come thru your siphon at bottling time. I do AG, but my friend that does extract ties a string around the LME bag and soaks the bag in the heated water to loosen it up. then he pulls it out and pours it into the boil kettle. No need to add the hot water to the bag.

 

[BrewinBromanite]

I won't comment on drinking tiny shards of ceramic (probably never a good idea...) - but I don't think it will be much of an issue. At the end of fermentation, it will be heavier than any liquid and will likely be buried in all the trub and gunk. If you rack carefully, you should be A-OK!

(My bro-in-law and I brewed an all extract blonde ale on his stove a few years ago, before moving to AG outdoors... When we went to rack to the bottling bucket a few weeks later, we discovered a black and chrome shiny object nestled into the gunk. Turns out it was a chunk of plastic from the microwave door over the stove top. Must have melted and broken off. He had this "I've been wondering where that piece went to" moment, and we called it our nuclear blonde.)


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[max384]

Any pieces left behind will definitely be buried at the bottom of the trub. As long as you don't stab your racking cane down into the bottom of the trub when you're transferring your beer, you'll be just fine. Think about the yeast cake left at the bottom of your fermentation buckets when they're done fermenting. They require a bit of work to get sprayed out with a high pressure water source. And those ceramic pieces will be at the bottom of that.

I seriously wouldn't even give this a second thought.

 

[IslandLizard]

At bottling/kegging time you can strain your beer through a doubled up fine mesh hop sack (the very fine ones). Just let it hang in your bottling bucket or keg. Keep as low as possible to prevent splashing and oxidation, but high enough so it doesn't get totally submerged, of course. Any debris larger than a few hundred micron will be caught.

Alternatively you can tie it around your racking cane.

 

[nikkuchan]

Thanks for the advice. I figured it would be left in the trub, which I always dump anyway, but I might do a little extra filtering this time just to be safe.

 

[QuercusMax]

I broke a hydroneter in the fermenter when I was a moron and tried to use it to squeeze the liquid out of some chipotle peppers in my Mole Stout. Didn't have any problem with glass shards in the final product.

 

[nikkuchan]

I broke a hydroneter in the fermenter when I was a moron and tried to use it to squeeze the liquid out of some chipotle peppers in my Mole Stout. Didn't have any problem with glass shards in the final product.

That makes me feel a lot better. Really. Thanks.

 

[indyfansd]

panty hose over auto-siphon should do the trick

 

[lgilmore]

Spend two bucks at the hardware store and get some one gallon paint strainers. Figuring sanitation yada yada, you'll attach them to the end of your siphon hose (exit end) doubled up. Use a rubber band, and you should catch anything when you transfer to the bottling bucket. Next time remember plastic is your friend. No coffee mugs.