Seriously????

What the hell?? Brewed up my Austin Homebrew Supply kit, an Oatmeal Stout. Yeast expires in 3 days, so I thought I better get it outta the way. Got through everything and was just getting done chilling to 80*, and then it happened...... Dropped (I thought I just set it down) my glass floating thermometer into my brew kettle (which still had the wort in it) and the tip of the thermometer hit the bottom of the kettle causing it to break and spill forth its insides into my precious wort!!!!! A whole batch of beer, ruined...... I'm so pi$$ed I could cry..... Sooooo, moral of the story, be careful with your thermometer!!!! Just needed to vent.....

 

oh man

Those thermometers suck anyway. After you get a decent one, maybe you will look upon this incident as the best thing that ever happened to you.

 

Sorry to hear that! Time for a metal thermometer. I just bought one last week actually.

 

for what it's worth, the red liquid in the thermometer is alcohol, the metal bead are steel (magnetic) and the binding material to hole them together is some kind of wax.

 

Digital probe with a 3ft line is the way to go my man.

 

Why do you think the batch is ruined?

 

Well, my biggest concern would be getting all the little shards of glass out of the wort. I could strain it, but I would feel a little uncomfortable passing out my beer knowing that there might be a shard of glass in it. Maybe I'm just overly concerned....

 

I'm just telling you what I would do.

I wouldn't dump it. When racking, I would make sure I racked well above the trub. And I wouldn't be giving any of them away. I would save them for my own consumption.

 

Too little too late.... down the drain to the beer gods.....

 

Say it ain't so?

 

srsly...that sucks.

 

I always thought it was some nasty kind of semi-poisonous alcohol in there. But then again, I suppose it's all semi-poisonous.

 

To be honest I would have done the same thing... but then I would never use a glass thermometer anywhere near my beer. I don't use a glass hydrometer for practically the same reason.
Go buy a metal probe type thermometer and a refractometer.

 

+1 on dumping it.

I know the beer is never ruined but glass and other stuff in teh wort would have made me too nervous also.

 

I'm sure a few dirty words would be said, but I'd have dumped it too.

 

Metal and Glass would be the first thing to settle out, leaving only the small amount of liquid that was in the thermometer to worry about. Not sure what is used in "cooking" thermometers .... I've got a Fat Tire Clone that is still in the primary. I broke the bottom out of the thermometer while checking the chilled wort temp. Just the tip broke and released the steel balls and a few small pieces of glass. Most of this got left behind in the pot. Then I racked into another primary leaving behind a quart or two... I'm going to rack into a secondary and then again when bottling. I'm confident that all debris from the broken thermometer will have been left behind....


Alcohol thermometer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Isoamyl acetate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

im with on this one. i dont play with that kinda crud for $30-40 of beer. JMO

 

You can't be too cautious when it comes to ingesting glass. You can always make more beer.

 

on a related note...i once made a margarita batch and served one to a neighbor only to find later that a piece of glass had made it from the ice machine to the blender to the glasses. i was wondering what the grit in my teeth was for a few minutes after she left ! to this day the person in question has not come over for drinks again !

 

Glass does not float no matter how small the particle is. It is much denser than water or fermented out beer and will sink to the bottom.

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/ShayeStorm.shtml

http://www.simetric.co.uk/si_water.htm

Silica glass is 2.2x more dense than water. I can only assume that the thermometers are made from silica glass.

:shrug:

I wouldn't have dumped it.

 

I also wouldn't have dumped it. I'd have drained to the carboy, probably re-racked to another carboy with a mesh bag over the cane just in case, then gone ahead with the 4.5 gallons I had left. It would get racked once again to go to keg, there is no possible way for glass or metal to get through all that.

On the other hand I use all digital thermometers, so no chance of breaking one in the pot. Hydrometer samples are always done in the tube not in the carboy.

 

I shed a tear at that one, and am going to buy a new metal thermometer at lunch today! My glass thermometer has never broken, but i knoched some glass shards off a hydrometer before, dropping it into a glass carboy (Silly, I know)

Once i replace the thermometer, the only glass in my brewing process is the 6G carboy and the pint I am drinking.

 

I too shed a tear.... or two.... It's a hard lesson learned. Needless to say, I'm now saving my pennies for a metal thermometer. I've got another kit at home and an extra GLASS thermometer that I may use tonight. It will be a memorial brew for my oatmeal stout (even though its an Irish red kit). Well, maybe my sad story has saved someone else's beer in the future....

 

[ame=http://www.vimeo.com/2789423]Lenora Claire eats glass at Bordello on Vimeo[/ame]

 

+1 Arneba28. Can't go wrong with the probe. You can set a target temp. and it will beep if you go over so it, that way you don't have to stand over your wort/steeping/sparge water the entire time. Also helps when cooking!

 

Anyone got a link to a good quality digital/probe thermometer?

 

Honestly, they all kind of suck. As far as I know, anyway. I've gone through probably 6 of them in as many years. There's only a couple manufacturers, but they sell the same product under 20 brand names... Oneida, Polder, etc., they are all the same.