Opened ball valve

[twos_and_zeros]

My last brew day I forgot to put the drain tube into my fermenter. As I was filling it up from the brew kettle, I remembered that I hadn't added it. So, the only thing I could think to do was drain all the wort from the fermenter back into the brew kettle, sanitize the drain tube and insert it, and then fill the fermenter back up. Obviously I kicked up a bunch of trub doing this, and I'm hoping that it'll just settle out in the fermenter. But I'm worried that I also had to open my fermenter ball valve to drain the wort.

Is that going to cause an issue for me when I go to drain the finished beer? Should I avoid using the fermenter's ball valve and use a siphon instead? I clean my valves after each use - all of them are three piece and I take them apart to clean. But is opening it to drain the wort and then letting it sit for 2 weeks going to risk infection or some off flavors?

 

[bruce_the_loon]

For my peace of mind, I'd siphon out of the fermenter. You can clean the outside of the valve and sanitize it to keep mold from growing there, and the surfaces inside are in contact with the wort, so that will be fine. But there will likely be some wort in the ball itself that you cannot get to right now and might harbour nasties that could get into the keg/bottles.