Problems with fruit flies

[BlueSunshine]

So this is the first summer I've brewed beer and yesterday I noticed 3 dead fruit flies in the neck of my airlock. After doing so research on some old threads it looks like people are divided as to how to proceed with a situation like this. So I have some questions:

1. Is there anyway my batch could be contaminated by this? There's no signs of anything funky going on in my carboy at the moment.

2. Will using a blow off tube instead of an s-shaped airlock help me out with this issue? How about putting a loosely fitting ziplock bag over the airlock?

3. Should I take off the airlock and re sanitize everything in there before I bottle? At the moment I have a really bad flu and don't want to go near the fermenter, should I just leave it go and let the vodka do its job?

Those little bastards, next time I start a batch I'm creating all kinds of traps and I'm going to nuke all my drains with bleach.

 

[ChshreCat]

1. Nope. That's what your airlock is there for.

2. Just keep your airlocks filled. Starsan solution is really good for this. Sanitize anything that lands in there.

3. Sure, empty and clean the airlock and put it back. Though, if there's a bunch of fruit flies around I'd leave it be rather than give them a minute or two of access to the brew.

Check your houseplants if you have any since they lay eggs in the soil. And any fruit you might have laying around in the open.

 

[ajf]

And don't forget to put the cap on the airlock.

-a.

 

[buzzkill]

them dirty flies have gotten inside my airlock before, but they never made it past the vodka I filled it with. they must have died very happy.

 

[devilishprune]

I had some serious fruit fly problems until I took all the houseplants out of my house. Now, I'm fly free and loving it.

More on topic, I would say don't throw it away and don't worry about it. There's probably no way that the water/vodka/whatever got into your beer, and if it did, it probably didn't get infected. Just relax.

 

[Priemus]

Relax they wont hurt your beer inside the lock.

I also have a problem with fruit flys here, I found that you can spray your plants with "green soap" and that will kill flys, and not kill the plant...

Im really not sure what green soap is in English, its the generic house hold cleaner here in Norway. Smells like retsina if that helps

 

[eelpout]

them dirty flies have gotten inside my airlock before, but they never made it past the vodka I filled it with. .

yea, they never made it past the vodka I was drinkin while lookin at my airlock

 

[rugman]

fly paper helps they really like bourbon so a little bourbon in a narrow moth glass and they fly in get drunk and fall in change every couple days

 

[mlyday]

Another way to kill the fruit flies where the are flying, usually on a counter. Is get a small dish put about a 1/4 in of red wine vinegar, so something else sweet smelling, and add a few drops of dish soap to it. The will try to get to the sweet liquid, but the soap breaks the surface tension of the liquid and they drown. Replace as needed until they are gone.

 

[JVD_X]

It's possible those are actually fungus gnats. A good cure to that is to stop watering your plants so much and break up the surface of the soil so that it dries out.

 

[BlueSunshine]

Some good suggestions in this thread. I'm going to have to try that trap trick with the red vinegar. I don't have any house plants though.

I've been meaning to bottle this batch for sometime now, however I'm feeling extremely under the weather and I don't want to infect the beer (if the damn fruit flies haven't already).

 

[tvtoms]

They can't get in that way without scuba gear, so dont worry about it. I found one floating dead in my star san filled airlock. Squeezed itself through the tiny hole in the airlock lid, only to find a star sanny grave. I tented my fingers and said excellent.

 

[kpr121]

I think I've read somewhere that human-illnesses cannot survive in beer. So I dont think youll have any problem with bottling while you are under the weather.