Potassium Metabisulfate sanitizer ruining Beer?

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kakamone

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I recently began my journey with brewing beer, and i bought a 15L bucket with a spigot. After the brew has been fermenting for a week, i decided to make a gravity reading. I forgot to remove the airlock and when the beer began flowing through the spigot, the sanitized water in the airlock went into the beer. If this was StarSan, i wouldn't mind. However this time for sanitizing everything i used potassium metabisulfate. I am now worried my batch is ruined. The sanitzed liquid was created by mixing 10g of potassium metabisulfate with 500ml of water. What do you guys think?
 
Welcome to homebrewing and our forums!

the sanitized water in the airlock went into the beer.
That little bit of K-Meta that was in the airlock* won't ruin your batch or impair your yeast. I would even doubt it would harm anything if the whole 500ml went in there. Especially after a week of fermentation, that batch may be done or close to done.

* Most airlocks only hold 30-50ml (1-1.5 fl. oz) of water/sanitizer.
How much sanitizer/water was in your airlock?
 
Welcome to homebrewing and our forums!


That little bit of K-Meta that was in the airlock* won't ruin your batch or impair your yeast. I would even doubt it would harm anything if the whole 500ml went in there. Especially after a week of fermentation, that batch may be done or close to done.

* Most airlocks only hold 30-50ml (1-1.5 fl. oz) of water/sanitizer.
How much sanitizer/water was in your airlock?
Around 30ml, i know the fermentation can be done, but im stressed that i wont be able to carbonate it in bottles, cos it killed the yeast. Brewers commonly use small amounts of K-Meta to stop wine from further fermentation.
 
TLDR: Add a little dry yeast (couple grams of CBC-1 or bottling yeast) at bottling to overcome any difficulties in carbonation.

30 ml at the concentration you've made is quite a bit when added to 10-15L of wort.

Fortunately, metabisulfite is an antioxidant and will react with oxygen in the final beer as an aid in preventing oxidation.

The mechanism in wine that prevents further fermentation is the removal of the oxygen by the metabisulfite - this works as wine requires no further carbonation and is well attenuated (has little to no remaining sugars) by the wine yeast.

The carbonation of beer by adding sugar (and/or yeast) overcomes the oxygen depletion scenario because the beer is lower in ABV, the yeast are still active and oxygen is diffused into the beer from the bottle (non-CO2 purged bottles have oxygen (air) at the top).
 

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