Baby toy contamination

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mountainwise

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This weekend a friend with a 1 year old baby helped me brew. The kid was well behaved except at the worst possible moment: When racking the previous beer to secondary, the kid snuck up and threw a fuzzy toy into my secondary fermenter. His mom pulled it out and let the beer drain off the toy back into the bucket until I ran in and pulled it away. So, I would be very surprised if contamination is not a problem. The beer is 8.5% ABV, so maybe it has some self-defense, but I'm not hopeful.

My question, though, is whether I need to worry about this more than normal contamination. Normally, I would play it out and see if I just get a nice sour beer. But does anyone know if contamination from a baby's toy presents the possibility of actually dangerous contamination? I'm wondering if I should I just throw out the beer for safety's sake.
 
I would not worry about dangerous contamination. It has fermented, the pH should already be low.

It might not even get regular contaminated. What was the purpose of the secondary - were you adding wood or fruit to it?
 
His mom pulled it out and let the beer drain off the toy back into the bucket until I ran in and pulled it away.


She was just concerned with your BH effec......


but i'd be curious what you end up with, so let it ride and report back! (if it tastes metallic, i want to know!)
 
When racking the previous beer to secondary, the kid snuck up and threw a fuzzy toy into my secondary fermenter.
What kind of "secondary" vessel is that? It must have an overly wide mouth for that to happen.
As others have said, there's generally no need for secondaries.

On the plus side, your beer will probably be OK. 8.5% alcohol helps a lot.
 
Dude, I have three kids...if I worried about every time they drooled or dropped something in my beer/wort I wouldn't have any beer to drink.

RDWHAHB


hmmm....mmm....as long as you raise them to tell the first dope pusher that tries to screw them over with something easy to make to f off...i'm still looking forward to the bottles! or if that's too much, at least do me the favor, of giving them a nightmare about InBev! that's the way my parents got me scared of sweets...i'll never forget it! little did they know it get me to like fermentation......
 
hmmm....mmm....as long as you raise them to tell the first dope pusher that tries to screw them over with something easy to make to f off...i'm still looking forward to the bottles! or if that's too much, at least do me the favor, of giving them a nightmare about InBev! that's the way my parents got me scared of sweets...i'll never forget it! little did they know it get me to like fermentation......

Your bottles will be shipped this week. Last day of school tomorrow so I'll have some free time to send them out!
 
C-c-c-confirmed:


but it was a 'plush toy' right? and it would have meant a lost bottle of beer if it wasn't squeezed back in?-?-? personaly, recently a lost beer, or a rinsed squisy toy, could mean the difference between tapping a keg, or a 30pack of BMC......i mean fermenting at 98f, with wine yeast....gets it down to 2-3 days for a 10 gallon batch...
i'd say it goes down the toilet, but when that's room temp...i think it just gets distilled through my sweat glands...


@mountainwise i'm just goofing off, and off-topic....but in my experience, i don't brew with mischeviouse kids, but i do brew sloppy. and some old yeast residue left from last batch seems to keep my beers safe from harm...just a bit dusty, maybe for your bottling?
 
When my daughters were this age, they would put their hands in their diapers and pull them off, sometimes with poopy fingers. So the question is, are they contaminated with fecal coloform, E. coli or other nasty bacteria?

I’d say yes. Babies are cleaned hourly and all day long, so probably not an issue on babies.

Placing contaminants like that in your wort is problematic however, you can’t clean your beer. Although there is high alcohol, the bacteria will still be there, multiplying and spoiling the beer over time. Alcohol doesn’t kill all bacteria, think of all the sour beers made at 8.5. ABV. It doesn’t take much fecal coloform or E. Coli to make you and your friends very sick. Use best practices folks.

You want to drink it? Not me...! Toss!
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If you have room, get it in the fridge - in the keg or fermenter. Let it lager there. It won’t stop an infection but may keep it under control.
 
When my daughters were this age, they would put their hands in their diapers and pull them off, sometimes with poopy fingers. So the question is, are they contaminated with fecal coloform, E. coli or other nasty bacteria?

...

You want to drink it? Not me...! Toss!

Do you know any way to test for such a thing before drinking it? The internet seems to think dangerous bacteria are less likely to survive in beer, but knowing before drinking would be nice.
 
I can’t think of any way to test for this short of sending it to a lab for analysis. Not really practical, so I’d err on the side of caution. We’ve all had to dump a batch.

Think of all the hand sanitizer we’ve been using this past COVID year - a lot of breweries were making alcohol based sanitizers in the 60-70% range per CDC guidelines to kill viruses and bacteria. Clearly the alcohol must be higher than your 8.5% beer strength to destroy contaminants.

There is good bacteria for making sour beer, then there is bad bacteria which will make you sick. You can’t easily tell if it is infected, so I think it is time to make the hard decision to dump it and re-brew a replacement batch, maybe find a new girlfriend without kids!
 
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I can’t think of any way to test for this short of sending it to a lab for analysis. Not really practical, so I’d err on the side of caution. We’ve all had to dump a batch.

Think of all the hand sanitizer we’ve been using this past COVID year - a lot of breweries were making alcohol based sanitizers in the 60-70% range per CDC guidelines to kill viruses and bacteria. Clearly the alcohol must be higher than your 8.5% beer strength to destroy contaminants.

There is good bacteria for making sour beer, then there is bad bacteria which will make you sick. You can’t easily tell if it is infected, so I think it is time to make the hard decision to dump it and re-brew a replacement batch, maybe find a new girlfriend without kids!
As much as I don't want to recommend dumping it, I gotta agree with @Beermeister32. It is not worth the risk to you, family and friends. 🤮😨
 
In Brew Dogs Episode 7, Jim Koch and the host(?) sat in a vat of wort like a hot tub to inoculate it. The wort went in every crevice of their nether regions.
 
That is just a gawdawful tale. I would not be the least bit interested in even knowing anyone that consumed whatever was produced.
One has to draw the line somewhere...

Cheers! (trying not to puke)
 
Might have some off/odd flavors but what about a heat pasteurization step to be safe. 15 sec at 72 deg C kills E. Coli and other nasties. Boiling point of ethanol is 78 deg C. With some carefull temp control you could pasteurize the beer in the middle of this range, cool and then package. Would be a good experiment as an alternative to tossing the batch. If you keg, you’re good to go, but if you bottle you’ll need to add yeast back in.
 
Might have some off/odd flavors but what about a heat pasteurization step to be safe. 15 sec at 72 deg C kills E. Coli and other nasties. Boiling point of ethanol is 78 deg C. With some carefull temp control you could pasteurize the beer in the middle of this range, cool and then package. Would be a good experiment as an alternative to tossing the batch. If you keg, you’re good to go, but if you bottle you’ll need to add yeast back in.
I guess that would be a viable option. :barf:
 
just finish what you're doing, get it kegged up, carb'd and tasted... IF its bad, toss it. if it goes bad over time, toss it.. and remember to throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak.
 
Aww...I love toddlers. My youngest grandson has only recently graduated from toddler to human pinball, which is fun to watch :D
And his father - my youngest son - and DIL announced they'll be having another - the first girl in two generations.

Cheers! (Besides...toddlers have an actual purpose and reason for being. Secondaries? Not so much ;))
 
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