Poured wort over 1 gallon of Star San solution...

[pepindavid]

The title says it all: I made my first major brewing mistake this PM. I forgot to dump the Starsan in my fermentor (about 1/2 to 3/4 gallon, I guess) before pouring my wort. Since I do Maxi-BIAB, I was about to add water anyway, so I just added less than I was supposed to.

I will go ahead and pitch the yeast, but what would you do? Even if Starsan is "no-rinse", I doubt that there should be that much of it in the beer...

- Would you simply dump it?
- Do you think it breaks down with time?
- Will the acidity kill the yeast?

(I'm pretty bummed, as you can imagine... Everything had went super well up to that point..!)

 

[Harrison552]

I'm assuming it's a 5 gallon batch? I've heard of people making the same mistake and the beer turned out just fine. I would bottle/keg it anyways because my experience is that when you think you made the worst mistake possible for some reason beer is so resilient it comes out great anyways

 

[m00ps]

I transferred my 2nd kegged batch onto a half gallon of starsan. 5 gal batch. No flavor impact I could detect. This was a saison if that matters

 

[Harrison552]

I've actually heard arguments it's actually good for the yeast, would be interesting to find out if that's true. I have no issue having lots of starsan bubbles and foam in the carboy or bucket.

 

[pepindavid]

It was about 3/4 gallon (approx) of properly diluted starsan, in a 4 gallon batch. That seems like a whole lot of Starsan to me, but I guess I'll see!

I am mainly concerned about toxicity; so far, it seems that when properly diluted, you could drink the thing directly with no bad effect, but I've yet to see a clear answer.

 

[MaryB]

you have maybe what? A teaspoon of StarSan in that 3/4 gallon? It is mostly phosphoric acid used to make sodas...

 

[pepindavid]

If I calculated properly, it's about 0.15 oz of pure Starsan (about half a teaspoon), in almost 4.5 gallon of liquid.

In any case, the fermentation started nicely after about 14 hours. It's my first attempt at a Köslch, fermenting at a steady 58F. I have a Brewometer, and it already went down about 10 gravity points (1.044 to 1.034).

Can't wait to taste the sample I'll take in a few days, and see if I can pick up any odd taste.

 

[pepindavid]

I took a sample yesterday after fermentation (now at a nice 1.010). It tasted fine, though it did some to have something like a light "twang", not that different from a soda. I started the cold conditioning, so we'll see how it is in a few weeks.

 

[pepindavid]

If somebody ever makes the same mistake and lands on this thread: the beer turned out quite good. I drank a few, and offered a few glasses to others (without telling them..!), and I couldn't find anything noticeable. Of course, I don't have a comparison point (first I brewed or even tasted a Köslch), but it is quite tasty and refreshing. Again, I "find" it a bit acidic, but that may be my imagination.

So, if you forget a significant amount of Starsan in your fermentor, fall back on the classics: RHDWHAHB).

 

[Harrison552]

Cool beans! That's what I figured

 

[madscientist451]

Good for you, my first thought was to dump it out and start over, but that's good to know that a good dose of star san doesn't make that much difference.

 

[55x11]

If somebody ever makes the same mistake and lands on this thread: the beer turned out quite good. I drank a few, and offered a few glasses to others (without telling them..!), and I couldn't find anything noticeable. Of course, I don't have a comparison point (first I brewed or even tasted a Köslch), but it is quite tasty and refreshing. Again, I "find" it a bit acidic, but that may be my imagination.

So, if you forget a significant amount of Starsan in your fermentor, fall back on the classics: RHDWHAHB).

Starsan is a low pH solution but otherwise completely harmless. You can even drink it! (Diluted, not concentrate of course).
So if you added 5 gallons of wort to 0.5G of starsan I would guess it turns out ok. Maybe a tad tart/sour note but probably not even that.

 

[CamG]

Well I will never fear the foam again.
Thanks for coming back and updating this thread so others can learn from this.

CamG

 

[bigbeerdsbrewing]

Well we can join this club now! We brewed a 12 gallon batch of barley wine and we use sanke kegs as fermenters. I have a European leg that is 13.5 gallons that was our vessel for this batch. My buddy was cleaning the two kegs out for the barley wine and the partygyle second running. He had star San in the 13.5 and pumped it into the 15.5 keg. The pump ran dry when it was almost empty, I'm thinking there was about a gallon left in the bottom of the keg. I asked him to just dump out the rest and put a cap on the keg to keep it sanitized and he was like no I'll dump it right before we fill it so it will stay sanitized. Well after whirlpooling the wort I asked him for the keg and filled it up with around 12 gallons of wort and right at the end there was wort right at the top. He says oh **** we never dumped the San out! I was hot! Anyway I remember hearing Justin from the brewing network did the samething and the 4star guys told him prefermentation it will be fine. So I called them to double check and sure enough the yeast eats the star San and makes for a rapid fermentation. Holy violent fermentation! So a question for you guys, will that crazy of a fermentation cause access fusel alcohols?