Rookie pitching mistake

Last night I completed the mash/wort or a partial grain red ale and threw it in the bucket. I woke up the yeast with a laddle of wort cooled down and it bubbled up to look like pizza dough. While the yeast was working i noticed that my digital thermometer was stuck at 478F. So I did an ice bath in the sink until it stopped steaming and was cool to the touch (about 30 hr).

Aside from the thermometer breaking and being unable to test temp of wort going into fermenter with yeast, i though everything was going well. The issue came in when i pitched the yeast into the wort. It was cake-y so i used a spoon to get the rest out. I wasn't thinking and put the yeast bowl into the bucket to get all the yeast out.

Will dunking a dishwasher cleaned bowl but not sanitized bown into the fermentation bucket ruin or put off flavors into the finished product? I know there are a lot of variables that can lead to off beer but after dunking the bowl i immediately thought i could have ruined it. Of course i'll let it sit for 3 weeks before bottle and sitting for another 3 weeks but ugh what a dumb move.

Thanks for your input!

 

Is it your best move to put an unsanitized bowl into your wort? - No. it is generally a bad idea.

Have you ruined your beer? - Not likely. A clean bowl is not likely to have contaminents that will cause you problems. As long as the yeast pitch was healthy it will beat out most microorganisms and make the beer inhospitable to those that do get in. (This is why even the egyptians, who did not have sanitizers, could make beer 1000's of years ago.)

Off flavors? - I would not worry about that because of the bowl. Keep your fermentation temps low (like mid to low 60's) and that will do more to make your beer taste good than anything else you can do.

 

Agree with the comments above, but we've all compromised our beers at some point or another, especially when starting out. I've pushed the stopper and airlock through the carboy and had to leave it to sit in the beer for the duration of the fermentation, among other things. Just relax, if it tastes way off when you to go drink it, then you probably know why. In the future though, every single thing that touches your beer (and especially whatever you're using to start your yeast) should be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized. I'm assuming you sanitized the inside of the bowl before putting the yeast in it, and sanitized the spoon that you used to scoop it out. If not, those are things you need to think about and address moving forward.

 

Thanks for the replies. I'll take it easy and see what happens after bottling. Its bubbling out of the air lock now so all is good for now. Thanks for you comments

 

I thought i'd give an update on the beer. It turned out great! No off flavors at all with a good amount of head. Very happy with the final product.