Crust on lid

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user 34035

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Advice for a new brewer please

I started a brew on Sunday (Woodfords Admirals Revenge) and added a little too much water to the fermenting bin. 24hrs later the head/crust that forms had risen so much that much of it has stuck to the lid of the bin. 48hrs later the head is starting to go down but is still bubbleing nicely. this morning i decided to scrape the residue off the lid and put it back in the brew(thought it may contain yeast)! Was this the right thing to do? Will the beer survive?

Thanks for the advice
 
You could have just left it alone. Theoretically, scraping the lid only allows more chances for contamination.
(Although I am sure it will be fine....)
 
as long as you sanitized everything that touched the beer (or the crust) it should be fine. this isn't necessary though, and next time i'd just leave it. there should be plenty of yeast left in suspension to finish fermentation.

edit: too slow.
 
Thanks for the quick reply. I ll leave it next time (or not put too much water in!)
 
how would i know if i had caused contamination? Will it stop making co2 or will the gravity of the brew not reduce?
 
there really isn't a good way to tell until you taste the beer, contaminated beer is usually very sour. this is why sanitation is so important, you can't put a price on peace of mind.

that being said, don't worry about it it's probably fine.
 
The beer is probably just fine, you have very little chance of getting the 3-4 bacteria types (out of thousands, millions?) in your brew that can mess it up. Almost anything is killed by the alcohol content, hops and PH of the beer.

If you got bad bacteria in there it will take a while to tell (weeks, months). You'll either have a beer that starts to get more sour, or just starts to loose all body it has and taste rather crappy. It won't ever hurt you as the bacteria are after the beer, but it can cause bottles to be overcarbonated.
 

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