o-ring popped out...

[Shifty11]

Brewed a batch yesterday, everything went smooth...until the very end.

I pitched my yeast and sealed my fermenter. As I was inserting the airlock, the rubber o-ring the airlock goes into popped off and fell in the beer.

I poured the beer into my secondary fermenter, found the o-ring, put it back on, then siphoned the beer back into the first fermenter. I had about a half gallon too much for the 2ndary or I would have just left it there.

Siphoning was much more gentle than pouring. I'm pretty concerned that pouring the beer into the other container having already pitched the yeast had adverse effects to the yeast and beer.

After 24 hours there doesn't appear to be any visible sign of yeast activity... I used a yeast starter that was 5-7 days old.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Is it ruined?

 

[masterfool101]

rdwhahb. I'm sure the yeast is fine . .. transferring for that short amount of time, and using a siphon, probably didn't stress them out.

what you MIGHT want to do, in the future, is lose the o-ring and just buy a stopper sized for the hole (maybe even 2 stoppers). Sanitize them before use. If a stopper falls in, no big deal. (actually, the o-ring wouldn't have been a big deal, either. you could have just covered the hole with something to prevent crap from falling in, and let it ferment. The CO2 generated would have kept out oxygen)

 

[Shifty11]

When I poured into the other container, there was a fair amount of frothing. I was thinking frothing/bubbling and oxygen were bad for the beer at that point. Any credence to that? It was only a few minutes

Should I give the yeast another day or two before being concerned?

 

[freisste]

Oxygen is good for wort and bad for beer. If no fermenting took place yet, there was no beer, so the oxygen was a good thing at that point.

 

[GASoline71]

When that happened to me... I star-san'd my entire arm, and went in after it.

Beer turned out fine. I was an American Style Wheat Ale.

Gary

 

[Shifty11]

Since I had literally just pitched the yeast seconds before all this, there was no fermenting taken yet, so it was essentially just wort.

From the sounds of it, everything should be fine?

 

[Shifty11]

Gary, the funny thing is that my fiance actually offered, while rolling up her sleeve, to get the o-ring with her hand, elbow deep. I convinced her otherwise. Maybe next time I'll let her get after it.

 

[jbaysurfer]

100% fine. For you:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

 

[GASoline71]

Gary, the funny thing is that my fiance actually offered, while rolling up her sleeve, to get the o-ring with her hand, elbow deep. I convinced her otherwise. Maybe next time I'll let her get after it.

Grab a bottle of star-san and tell her it will only sting for about 30 seconds or so...

Gary

 

[Shifty11]

Jbaysurfer: that is an awesome link! One guy did 2 if the exact things I did. And from reading many of those posts I realized something in the process I forgot to do which is prolly the biggest mistake...

I pitched the yeast right from the fridge. I never let it warm up to room temp. What should I expect from this?

 

[CiscoKid]

I pitched the yeast right from the fridge. I never let it warm up to room temp. What should I expect from this?

Honestly - you should expect beer. Odds are the temperature shock is going to play havoc on the yeast and you're not going to get anything like the number of active cells advertised on the packet from the start - might take a little longer to get real active, might have some off flavors... might just be fine. But next time you have an opportunity to do things a little different, improve your process, and in the end improve the beer you make.

And honestly, most of us have done any number of things in that thread. Yet we all made beer and keep doing this. :rockin:

 

[BetterSense]

I would have just left the oring in the beer. If you wanted to, place a piece of foil or something over the hole. I usually ferment in buckets that have holes drilled in the lid, but I never use airlocks. Airlocks are good for aging but not needed during fermentation.

 

[Shifty11]

Well its been 48 hours and fermentation is taking place. Not exactly sure how long its been going or when it started, but it is definitely going now!

And the waiting game continues. Thanks for all the responses and help everyone!

Now for the next batch...

 

[jbaysurfer]

Jbaysurfer: that is an awesome link! One guy did 2 if the exact things I did. And from reading many of those posts I realized something in the process I forgot to do which is prolly the biggest mistake...

I pitched the yeast right from the fridge. I never let it warm up to room temp. What should I expect from this?

Glad it helped, and glad your yeasties are munching away!

Like was said, you probably did shock the yeast by pitching straight from the fridge, and I frequently forget to pull the yeast from the fridge early enough, but what I'll do is put the yeast vial in my pocket to gently accelerate the warm up.

Ideally you should pull it an hour or two prior to pitching, but I've had good luck with the pocket trick too.