Question for a Noob: Did I contaminate?

[AdamNYK]

Ok....just brewed my first batch of beer this past weekend. (London Porter Clone). Everything went great, until I went to install the fermentation lock on my 6 gallon food-grade, well santized, pail.

As I inserted the lock, the rubber gasket on the lid of the pail fell into the pitched wort.

I panicked and tried to fish it out with my hand before it fell to the bottom. Before I dunked my hand in all the way in, I thought better of it, and tried using the plastic spoon I had been using to fish it out. No luck. I was forced to dump the wort out of the pail into the 2 pots I has used to brew earlier in the day. (2 gallon pot for steeping grains, 4 gallon primary brew pot.) I did not re-clean the pots before dumping the wort in....in a panick I was worried about having air exposed to the beer for too long. (In hindsight, this was probably a much smaller concern than I thought, and should have taken the time to re-clean the pots.)

I finally found the gasket at the bottom of the pail, gave it a quick rinse, and placed it back on the lid to "ale-pail."

My question to the group: Is my first batch ruined? I've been checking on it, and it seems like fermentation is going on, and the smells coming off the fermentation lock smell like beer. I just hope that all that hard work was not wasted, and I did not contaminate my beer.

By the way, I'm so glad I found this place and the hobby. Such great information here!!!

 

[bradsul]

Your batch will most likely be fine (beer is very forgiving stuff). In the future, just leave the gasket in the fermenter, it won't hurt the beer.

Regardless, leave it be for 2 weeks and then give it a taste. If it tastes like beer you're in good shape. DO NOT dump the batch until you give it time to ferment.

And welcome to HBT!

 

[LostDakota]

I did almost the same thing three weeks ago. The only difference is that I left the gasket in. The airlock had enough weight that it held a pretty good seal. Weeks later when I transfered to secondary, I forgot it was in the bottom of the bucket and pitched it into the disposal. I tasted the beer at this point and is seemed like it was just flat, but otherwise ok. You should be fine. Beer was made long before StarSan or One Step.
-Drew

 

[efreem01]

I was pushing a wet rubber stopper into the top of the carboy and the damn thing kept popping out on me. So i pushed it harder and voila, now i have an excellent batch of stopper ale cold crashing in my fridge. The stopper pushed entirely through the opening and fell into my beer. So i just put a universal (i love these things) stopper in the now vacant hole and let it ferment. It's a learning experience really.