First Batch Question

[BernieBrewer]

So I'm brewing my first batch. On Friday I brewed and put the beer into the primary fermenter. I put the fermenter into the basement where its cooler. Everything was looking good, by the morning the fermentation lock was bubbling, and I thought things were going well. About 15-16 hours into fermentation the thing stopped bubbling. I then noticed that when the fermentation lock was originally inserted into the pail, the rubber seal around the lock pushed through and must be now in the beer. So my questions are two fold. Is my yeast dead or do you think the CO2 is leaking around the fermentation lock? and do you think the beer is contaminated since the seal around the lock is clearly not air tight? I'm kinda stuck, I don't know whether I should continue on with this batch or start over. Thanks for your advice.

 

[SwAMi75]

Do you have a secondary fermenter? If so, and if I were you, I think I'd go ahead and rack it to secondary. It sounds to me like your primary is pretty much done, and it should be able to finish out in secondary.

Even if you don't have something like a carboy, use your bottling bucket. Sanitize the lid from your primary and your airlock, and put them on your bottling bucket.

Best of luck!

 

[Sasquatch]

The beer is probably fine... if it was fermenting steadily, the slight positive pressure of the co2 will have kept things clean. I agree with Sam... go ahead and transfer the beer into an airlocked carboy or something and let it sit a couple weeks. Always continue the batch. You can prove it's bad in two months after bottling... but you sure don't want to throw out a whole batch of beer that's probably fine.

 

[cygnus128]

Agreed. Your scenario is not much different than if you were using a blow off hose rather than an airlock for primary. Beer should be fine.

 

[BernieBrewer]

Thanks for the advice, I moved the beer to the carboy tonight, everything looks and smells good.