Hi,
I'm on my first brew and I've found a lot of information on this question searching the forums but none quite exactly answered my situation.
I did my first brew and put it in primary fermentation with an airlock, put it in a shower stall in our basement, and then went out of town for about a week. It is a sealed and tiled shower stall that I never use, so I'm not worried about a hard-to-clean mess in the event of a blow out.
I went out of town for about a week and came back to find the airlock fluid cloudy and contaminated with what appeared to be a small amount of overflow (yeast or beer... not sure). I used a starsan water mix in my airlock. When I saw this I added a bit more starsan solution to the airlock because the airlock fluid level appeared a little low, but I did not take it off and re-sanitize the three pieces of the airlock because I am assuming the damage--if any--has already been done at this point. Since it was probably like this for several days, is this batch already ruined? Can I just leave it alone and take no further action until primary fermentation is complete in another week or so?
In the future I will use a blow off or replace the airlock immediately, but I am hoping for this first attempt I can be lazy and leave it alone for another week or so until primary finishes.
I'm on my first brew and I've found a lot of information on this question searching the forums but none quite exactly answered my situation.
I did my first brew and put it in primary fermentation with an airlock, put it in a shower stall in our basement, and then went out of town for about a week. It is a sealed and tiled shower stall that I never use, so I'm not worried about a hard-to-clean mess in the event of a blow out.
I went out of town for about a week and came back to find the airlock fluid cloudy and contaminated with what appeared to be a small amount of overflow (yeast or beer... not sure). I used a starsan water mix in my airlock. When I saw this I added a bit more starsan solution to the airlock because the airlock fluid level appeared a little low, but I did not take it off and re-sanitize the three pieces of the airlock because I am assuming the damage--if any--has already been done at this point. Since it was probably like this for several days, is this batch already ruined? Can I just leave it alone and take no further action until primary fermentation is complete in another week or so?
In the future I will use a blow off or replace the airlock immediately, but I am hoping for this first attempt I can be lazy and leave it alone for another week or so until primary finishes.