Star San solution in fermenter

[donshizzles]

I have a pumpkin ale in the primary with a blowoff tube sitting in about 3 cups of star san solution. Its been in there for 2 weeks now. I just moved the vessel to take a sample (for gravity reading) and about 2 cups of the solution was sucked back up into the tube and ultimately ended up in the beer. Is this a bad thing? Will it kill the yeast, impart and off flavors, etc.?

 

[Hypnolobster]

Nope, it won't cause any problems at all.

It will be far, far out of solution and completely neutralized.

 

[samc]

It really is unknown at this point. How do you know the effectiveness of the StarSan after two weeks. I believe that if the PH has risen above 3 it loses its killing power, therefor you have a somewhat low risk of bacteria being introduced into a beer that does have alcohol.

At this point nothing you can do but wait it out.

 

[dr_finklestein]

I had the same thing happen about a year ago and it DID ruin the beer. Just my $.02

 

[Warren1086]

Whats the best practice to prevent any type of solution from being sucked back into the fermenter?

 

[samc]

A foam stopper is a foolproof method of avoiding suck back.

 

[wildwest450]

Whats the best practice to prevent any type of solution from being sucked back into the fermenter?

Use glass.


_

 

[Warren1086]

Use glass.


_

I have an IPA in the carboy that I finished up last night, and I heard a really weird noise around 4am. I went to go check it out and my airlock was full of wort! I quickly took off the airlock and replaced it with some sanitized siphon tube from earlier and stuck it into a glass jar full of water/vodka. When I woke up later this morning that jar was full of krausen and had overflowed into the tub I had placed it in prior. I swapped the vodka/water jar for one with some boiled water/sanitizer, which is now doing the same thing. I dont have problem swapping out the jars, but I just want to make sure that none of the sanitizer gets sucked into the fermenter.

 

[BrewKnurd]

Either the stopper or the glass are both ways to prevent, although I would argue that if you already have plastic, the simple desire to prevent suckback probably isn't enough to justify going to glass.

I use a solid stopper when moving my better bottle anywhere. But another point in this case is that 3 cups is a lot of volume, and you don't need that much to create a liquid seal. I've been running my blowoff tubes into a mason jar with an inch or two of starsan, so i've got at most a cup of liquid.

One one of the old episodes of The Session, Justin was telling Charlie Talley, one of the founders of Five Star, about how he racked 3 gallons of wort into a carboy with about 2 gallons of starsan before realizing he hadn't emptied the carboy. Charlie said he thinks it probably would have fermented. So I'm guessing you're ok with 2 cups into a 5 gallon batch.

 

[unionrdr]

They say it breaks down into a yeast nutrient in wort/beer,but not sure how fast it does this.