I recently bought a chest freezer and temperature controller to use as a fermentation chamber (I've been getting inconsistent results with my ales and I think it's because the temperature in the room I've been brewing in can swing pretty high unexpectedly). I applied silicone caulking to all the seams since my other chest freezer (used as a kegerator) has developed some rust on the seams due to condensation and I wanted to avoid that. I left it open for several hours for the silicone to cure, and tried to ventilate it using a fan. It seemed cured to me, so a few hours after this I put my better bottle full of fresh wort into it with the airlock attached, which ended up causing some suckback (now I realize not to move better bottles with the airlock still attached). I closed the freezer lid, set the temp, and left it. When I came back to check on it and opened the freezer, I noticed that there was some more suckback (to the point that there wasn't enough liquid to seal the 3-piece airlock so some air must have been sucked in) and the freezer smelled of curing silicone (ammonia I believe). I refilled the airlock, and the new liquid (originally filled with sanitizer, vodka used to refill, so I'm not worried about the liquid) was just immediately sucked into the fermenter. I ventilated it with a fan some more and eventually the smell subsided. I came back an hour later and filled the airlock and this time there was no suckback, so I set the temp and went to bed. Anyway, it's fermenting happily now but I am a bit worried that some of the ammonia or whatever else the silicone put into the air got sucked into the fermenter and dissolved in the wort. So I guess I have two questions: How likely is it that some of the ammonia got into the wort, and if so is this going to make the wort toxic or cause other problems? I'm hoping this is a RDWHAHB situation, especially because this beer is the first one I made a starter for and I'm accurately controlling fermentation temps so I'm hoping it'll be an improvement. Thanks for any advice or information!
Fermenter suckback in freezer with not-quite-cured silicone caulking
- Thread starter joey
- Start date
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Since this really doesn't have much to do with fermentation, this is probably in the wrong section, sorry. Anyway I found the tube of silicone to confirm whether it puts off ammonia/methanol or acetic acid when curing, and it doesn't indicate. I tried looking it up online and I can't find the product on any website (I bought it at lowes and they don't even have it on their website) so I can't find any more information on it. Since I have no idea what chemicals got sucked into my fermenter, I'm leaning towards dumping the batch (first time I've ever considered it). :-/
The tube does say "Contains: siloxanes and silicones, DI-ME, hydroxy-terminated, silica, methyltris(2-butylideneaminooxy)silane". No idea what gets into the air though, and even if I did those all sound terrible to get near my beer.
The tube does say "Contains: siloxanes and silicones, DI-ME, hydroxy-terminated, silica, methyltris(2-butylideneaminooxy)silane". No idea what gets into the air though, and even if I did those all sound terrible to get near my beer.
snowboard419
Member
I do not think you will have anything toxic getting into you beer. probably not even enough of anything to even cause any off flavor. RDWHAB
