Fermentor Cold Crashing

[GrassBrewer]

Not a huuuuge deal I don't think, but wanted to get people's opinion on this.

Over the summer I built up a brand new fermentation chamber out of a fridge. Inside I have a stainless steel fermentor, with a blow off tube into a large mason jar. I am very happy with it and it not just works great, it also looks great.

Anyway, winter was coming, so I added in a new heater that was better for the larger space vs. what I had before so it didn't struggle so much.

So, I am pretty sure I have avoided this problem while cold crashing by accident prior, but this time, I seemed to have changed my process due to not wanting to remove everything in the chamber twice.

The problem I see is that when I was happy with my beer's gravity, I just started cold crashing, leaving everything inside the ferm chamber.

It seems the temperature differential change (~warm 67F to 40F) of the sealed fermentor sucked up the starsan / water mixture I had in in the mason jar that the blow off tube was submerged in. As an engineer, I 100% understand why it happened in hindsight. My worry is more if I ruined the beer or not. I'm not a chemical engineer.

I don't think it was a lot but I guess I was curious if people thought this might be a problem. I don't want people (or myself) to get sick or anything.

 

[str1p3s]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/safety-of-star-san-in-beer.51787/

 

[kh54s10]

You are probably fine. You have diluted your beer. How badly depends on how much Starsan was sucked back.

The solution is either an S style airlock, A dry style airlock or just don't have enough Starsan that it can fill the blow off tube. If it cannot fill the tube to the top it will suck up until the end goes dry then it will drop back into the catch container.

 

[LittleRiver]

https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/ccguardianv2.htm

 

[Bassman2003]

The cold crash dilemma can only be solved by adding or having a reservoir of CO2 to replace the condensed CO2 in the fermenter. I have a little regulator with air gun CO2 tanks put at 1 psi to avoid this. Otherwise you will oxygenate your fermenter.

 

[GrassBrewer]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/safety-of-star-san-in-beer.51787/

Thanks for the reference! Some reassuring information here.

https://www.brewhardware.com/product_p/ccguardianv2.htm

This is an interesting idea and product. I might give it a try.

 

[LittleRiver]

...This is an interesting idea and product. I might give it a try.

I don't have that product, but I'll probably end up with one, it looks solid and the price is very fair. If you have questions contact Bobby at brewhardware, he's always been very helpful to me.

 

[str1p3s]

I've been using the bruloon lock http://brulosophy.com/2018/05/10/7-methods-for-reducing-cold-side-oxidation-when-brewing-beer/

But I also just had a thought that you could rig up a tee with shut off valves. One leads to the balloon/bladder, the other to a jar of starsan. Flip the valve to the balloon until it is full and then flip it back to the starsan. When you are ready to cold crash, flip the valve back to the balloon.