Dropped Digital Thermometer in Wort

[ToledoBeer]

So I was making an Irish Stout for St. Patrick's day a couple of weeks ago and I may have had a little too much drink while I was brewing. Long story short I dropped my digital thermometer into the wort right after I pulled it off the boil. I fished it out with a pair of tongs after about 20 seconds.

Everything went normal afterwards. Fermented like a champ and the krausen dropped a few days later. Question is, should I be worried that the batteries (2 AAAs) that were in the thermometer could have any negative effective on the beer?

Amazingly enough I've dropped this thermometer into sanitizer before as well. After a few days of drying it still works!

 

[bruce_the_loon]

Battery seals are normally pretty tough and 20 seconds in the hot wort with the thermal protection of the thermometer case shouldn't have heated the cells enough to raise internal pressures enough to breach them. If you toss a AAA in a fire, it takes a good couple of minutes before it ruptures (don't try this at home, I'm an untrained amateur) and that's a few hundred degrees hotter than the wort with direct contact.