explosive secondary?

I moved my bear to secondary last night, and when I checked on it this morning, the stopper and airlock were on the floor next to the carboy. I'm guessing the stopper got pushed out somehow (?) The beer's been uncovered, then, for potentially 8 hours. Should I be worried about contamination?

 

nope...if it was able to push off the stopper then it is still generating co2 and you shouldn't have to worry about stuff falling in. just sanitize a new stopper and airlock and put it back on.

one question...before you transferred to secondary, did you check to ensure you had reached your final gravity and that fermentation was finished?

 

I hit 1.013 about 4 days before transferring, and BeerSmith's predicted FG was 1.012, so I figured I'd be okay.

 

Also, I just realized I wrote "bear" instead of "beer" in my original post. I love drinking bear.

 

Do you swallow your bear....

Tim

 

looks like you will be fine, then. wait...did you have an airlock on the secondary when it popped off? there will always be a small amount of co2 blowing off when you just transfer a beer from mixing the yeasties up. if you just had a closed stopper, of course it popped off.

 

Yes, there was an airlock on it.

 

Or starsan could have made the stopper slippery enough to push it's way out.

Or maybe the carboy sneezed (snicker, snicker).

 

An airlock is not supposed to pop off unless your krausen plugs it up. It should normally allow a significant amount of gas to exit (much more gas than a secondary should give off under any reasonable condition.