Sanitizing Problems

Alright. I was brewing my first batch today, Irish Red Ale. I used my PBW as my cleaner and soaked everything for a couple hours. After that drained the water and mixed a new batch with my sanitizer. While cleaning out the foam all the time I continued to dump the spoon back into the sanitizing solution/water and make sure nothing that touched the wort except after it had been in the sanitizing solution.

I have since put the wort in the fermentator and placed it in my dark, cool place. Once I was beginning to clean up everything afterwards I noticed that my "sanitizing solution" wasn't mixed correctly, I mixed it too light. My fear is that my sanitizing solution I was dipping the spoon into was basically a little bit of sanitizer and water.

Do you guys think I am should abandon the operation, or is the best thing to live it out and see if everything turns out?

Thanks for the help.

 

I'd say go with the flow....

 

Let it be. People do get infections but it's not all that common despite what you may read. You should be golden. Let us know how it turns out.

 

I wouldn't throw it out without knowing it went bad. If it does go bad, learn from this & move on. Good luck!

 

You don't dump your beer, for making a minor little mistake. Your beer is hardier than that.

And you don't dump something because you think it's going to turn out bad. You only dump a beer that you KNOW is bad, and you give it at least a couple of months in the bottle before you even make THAT decision.

Read theses two threads that were compiled for nervous new brewers to realize that your beers are not a weak baby that is going to die if you look at it wrong.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wha...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

Read this one especially

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/nev...virtue-time-heals-all-things-even-beer-73254/

Our beer is really resilient despite the boneheaded things we do to it. And even if something appears to be wrong, often time and the yeasties go along way to correct itself.

I think about it in terms of my time and money, I'm not going to dump 30 or more dollars worth of ingredients, 6 hours of brewing time, and at least 2 months from yeast pitch to cracking the first bottle, on what could be a minor mistake (that may not even harm the beer anyway,) until I have exhausted all probability that the beer won't improve. And even then that means at least walking away from the bottles for maybe 6 months or more.

And so far I have never beer wrong.

After all these years of brewing I still haven't had a dumper.

And I've made some big mistakes.

But I have never had a beer that wasn't at least palatable, after all that time.

They may have not been stellar beers, but they were still better than BMC or Skunky Beers in green bottles that people actually pay money for.

So just read those threads and next time, relax, and give your beer a chance to prove how strong it really is.