Fermentation Help

[Grim_Ale]

Ok, I have only a 5 Gal carboy and recently brewed an IIPA with an OG of 1.084 and made a 2L yeast starter using White Labs Cal Ale Yeast. Pitched yeast at 68 degrees and ferm temp is steady at 70 ( thats ferm temp not ambient room temp )

Well I filled up my carboy to the top of the glass right before it tapers to the neck.

Well i used a carboy hood with 2 blow off tubes. 1/2" ID and 3/8" ID for the blow off.

Now i Know i was going to lose some beer from vigorous fermentation but ive never had the water turn yellow on me from so much blow off.

SO i start to worry about infections because the water is a lemon yellow and the tubes all pretty cruddy, nothing clogging, just stuck on very thin gunk.

So i go get a new jug for my blow off and fill it half way with water add a little bit of Star San sanitizer and take the tubes out of the nasty looking on into a fresh one.

Its not blowing any more beer/ foam out but it is still very much producing CO2.

Before I emptied out the first Gal jug I noticed som crud on the bottom.

Looks exactly like yeast. It was covering the whole bottom of the blowoff bucket, however looking in my carboy theres at least 2 inches of yeast at the bottom of it.

My question is should I worry about infection and is the yeast lost considerable enough to worry.

OR

How bad did I screw up.

( I am very very strict when it comes to sanitary practice when brewing and im not worried about any contominates pre-ferm but im worried by beer may be in jeopardy now. )

Thanks.

 

[s3n8]

Get yourself a 6.5 gallon bucket.

This batch will probably be fine. The yeast lost probably will not be a huge deal, there should be plenty left to do the job. I always use starsan in my airlocks and blowoff. Others do not. In any case, I seriously doubt any creepy crawlies swam up through the blowoff to get in your beer which is now a high alc environment.

 

[oms1981]

I'm not going to say it's impossible, but I will say that it's nearly impossible that any infectious baddies went up the blowoff hose and into your beer. things that will give you problems need to basically come down out of the air and fall directly into your beer (wild yeasts, microbes, etc) or they need to be there to begin with. These types of things really aren't going to get into your blowoff collector and then travel via the hose into the fermenter. As for the tube being cruddy, that's kreusen, misc hop junk, yeast, etc. This crap has a tendency to stain vinyl tubing. If you saw my blowoff hose you would probably cry. But I still use it every time, and I still have never had even the slightest problem with it. I also wouldn't worry about the yeast loss. If you were having a good amount of blowoff, you probably had a pretty solid fermentation going.

 

[Braid]

+1 to oms

A friend and I had such a huge blow off with a stout once, we just emptied the sanitizer and collected the blow off in a growler. Since we brewed it during a hurricane, we added some pineapple juice and coconut and called it Hanah Stout. Flavors didn't come through very well, but the hint of them was quite tasty!