Suckback

[yono1986]

I'm fermenting a quad and I've been slowly lowering the temperature for the secondary and I just saw that I sucked up ~1 quart of starsan/blow off mess. What if anything can I do to salvage the batch?

 

[MSK_Chess]

awww man, its probably doomed. An entire quart, thats like a litre. Ouch!

 

[Morrey]

Been there, seen that, done that. Sucks.

Norcal Solutions sells these jar lids with nipples to make a CO2 reserve system. Off gassing CO2 fills these two 1/2 G Mason jars and traps the CO2 so it can be drawn back into the fermenter to prevent suck back when crashing. BTW....stepping down slowly will not work as you have seen. I did 5 degree steps and the first step I went down sucked back a whole bucket of Starsan. I shifted to the system pictured following that fiasco.

 

[Bobby_M]

I do the same thing but without all the extra hardware, just a bag. [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jbj7IJ4uZU&t=3s[/ame]

 

[eric19312]

Here is my cold crashing suckback solution. Also use it to push beer out of fermentor into kegs when ready to package. About 3 PSI and I turn the gas on for 5 seconds at a time as the air temp inside the fridge falls.

 

[The_Bishop]

I posted something similar about a year ago.

 

[Toy4Rick]

it has happened to me a couple of times, drank it nobody every know the difference. I wouldn't make a habit of it that's for sure.

I usually leave the blow off tube out of the starsan until it reaches temp then pitch yeast and insert tube.

Good luck
Rick

 

[yourlastchance89]

I struggled finding a solution to this and wound up stumbling across something really simple like this on here. I do incremental cold crashing too but I only do 2 degree increments a day. Gives the yeast more time to ferment minute sugar that's left and to clean up undesirable compounds. I couple that with a longer blow-off tube to avoid any accidental suck back the first 4-8 degrees going down. Then all I do is sanitize and fit a balloon over the end of a tube with electrical tape. Fill it with Co2. Then swap the balloon tube with the current blowoff tube. Super easy, super cheap(balloon, co2, electrical tape), and hasn't failed me yet.

View attachment 1505074043024.jpg

 

[DaveDiedDancing]

This happened to me a few years ago with an IPA. The Star San solution more or less floated on the top of the beer. I just racked from underneath it and it was fine. Lost some beer but what was kegged was still good.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I just use a 3 piece airlock with vodka in it. If it gets sucked in, I don't care.

 

[steveoatley]

I do the same thing but without all the extra hardware, just a bag. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jbj7IJ4uZU&t=3s

Bobby

What kind of bag is that ??

Thx

S

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, when you look at the design of the 3 piece airlock and understand exactly where a low-pressure "zone" would exist it's pretty easy to see why they're virtually designed to suck back...

Cheers!

 

[FireManDan]

This happened to me a month or so ago. One gallon sucked back into the fermenter full of a blonde. I thought I was doomed. Like one of the previous commenters mentioned it floats at the top I rack it off lost some beer and went on.

I too jumped on HBT and did some searches. If you search there is a thread on here that mentions an episode of Brew Strong on the Brewing Network with the owner of Five Star. He said he has drunk a whole glass of Starsan. Although I'd never do this, for an owner of a business to risk advertising such an act I trusted his word.

With all that being said what I learned was that it will affect the body, which it did. If you don't rack it off or from underneath it, you will essentially water down your beer. Other than that most everyone who sucked on that Keg (not knowing about the mishap) really enjoyed it.

Rack it off and chive on dude.

As far as suck back and preventing it:
I use PET carboys and when my black box starts to cold crash I pull the carboy hood disconnecting the blow off tube and I place some sanitized loose foil over the opening. Hope this helps.

Please keep us up to date on your decisions and outcome of the beer.

CHEERS!!:rockin:

 

[iijakii]

I kind of find it silly how far people will go to avoid oxygen on the packaging side (pushing from fermenter to keg with CO2 and then purging 9x etc) but are perfectly fine cold-crashing without feeding CO2. I think if I didnt have CO2 handy I wouldnt cold crash. The oxygen intake is significant and very obvious. A little extra trub in the keg or bottle is A OK.

 

[hotwatermusic]

I triple up nitrile gloves dipped in starsan before hand and electrical tape around the mouth of the carboy. I let them sit warm for 12 or so hours until they start to fill with CO2 and then crash. Not perfect, but cheap and easy.

 

[FireManDan]

I kind of find it silly how far people will go to avoid oxygen on the packaging side (pushing from fermenter to keg with CO2 and then purging 9x etc) but are perfectly fine cold-crashing without feeding CO2. I think if I didnt have CO2 handy I wouldnt cold crash. The oxygen intake is significant and very obvious. A little extra trub in the keg or bottle is A OK.

Have you ever stuck your head into a chest freezer after a full fermentation?

 

[MSK_Chess]

This happened to me a month or so ago. One gallon sucked back into the fermenter full of a blonde. I thought I was doomed. Like one of the previous commenters mentioned it floats at the top I rack it off lost some beer and went on.

I too jumped on HBT and did some searches. If you search there is a thread on here that mentions an episode of Brew Strong on the Brewing Network with the owner of Five Star. He said he has drunk a whole glass of Starsan. Although I'd never do this, for an owner of a business to risk advertising such an act I trusted his word.

With all that being said what I learned was that it will affect the body, which it did. If you don't rack it off or from underneath it, you will essentially water down your beer. Other than that most everyone who sucked on that Keg (not knowing about the mishap) really enjoyed it.

Rack it off and chive on dude.

As far as suck back and preventing it:
I use PET carboys and when my black box starts to cold crash I pull the carboy hood disconnecting the blow off tube and I place some sanitized loose foil over the opening. Hope this helps.

Please keep us up to date on your decisions and outcome of the beer.

CHEERS!!:rockin:

Wow a whole Gallon. I always wondered how much in terms of volume of air/gas got sucked back because as your case demonstrates it can be fairly considerable. I suspect it depends on a number of factors, head space , temperature etc. So if we take your case above which sucked in an entire gallon of liquid can we say that any Co2 harvester with a volume of less than a gallon risks oxygen ingress the very thing we are seeking to avoid?

 

[MSK_Chess]

I kind of find it silly how far people will go to avoid oxygen on the packaging side (pushing from fermenter to keg with CO2 and then purging 9x etc) but are perfectly fine cold-crashing without feeding CO2. I think if I didnt have CO2 handy I wouldnt cold crash. The oxygen intake is significant and very obvious. A little extra trub in the keg or bottle is A OK.

Do you know how much is sucked back in if we assume a Gallon of head space in our carboy? If you know it would be really helpful as i am trying to put together a very low cost solution but i need to know the volume of suckback (assuming a gallon of headsapce) to provide enough volume. I don't believe mason jars hold enough volume to prevent oxygen ingress, no way.

 

[Dcpcooks]

Did it completely drain the blow off bucket? I had that happen once and it sucked in air after it sucked back the sanitizer. That batch was a complete fail and needed to be tossed. It was diluted, oxidized and soured.

 

[yourlastchance89]

I just use a 3 piece airlock with vodka in it. If it gets sucked in, I don't care.

I've never been a fan of airlocks of any kind for cold crashing. 3 piece always risk a suck back of whatever they carry, and with s-shape you are just filling your beer with straight up oxygen. Like an earlier poster said, if you aren't filling that vacuum with pure c02, in some way you are compromising the quality of your best brew possible. Probably still drinkable in the end, but still, I'd rather bottle or keg and take on some trub than risk exposure to oxygen or possible infection. This summer has been particularly bad for flies in my area, and at one point (I cover it with saran wrap now) I had six dead flies in my bucket of star san solution. Wouldn't want any of that in my beer and that's just what was visible to the naked eye

 

[SlitheryDee]

Personally I just switch out the blowoff tube with an S style airlock when the danger of a blowoff is over. I know there'll be some oxygen uptake when I cold crash, but with the style of beers that I brew it tends to not make itself apparent in the flavor before the beer is consumed.

 

[daphatgrant]

Been there, seen that, done that. Sucks.

Norcal Solutions sells these jar lids with nipples to make a CO2 reserve system. Off gassing CO2 fills these two 1/2 G Mason jars and traps the CO2 so it can be drawn back into the fermenter to prevent suck back when crashing. BTW....stepping down slowly will not work as you have seen. I did 5 degree steps and the first step I went down sucked back a whole bucket of Starsan. I shifted to the system pictured following that fiasco.

Damn, I really like that setup but that's some change... Stainless is real nice feature though, buy once and keep on using it. It's not unheard of to cold crash more than one fermenter at a time so I'd probably eventually want 2 sets...

http://www.norcalbrewingsolutions.com/store/CO2-Carbon-Dioxide-Harvester-Kit.html

I'll have to think about these vs building (cobbing) my own. I do like stainless though .

 

[mongoose33]

I've done a couple of things to try to control suckback. One is to use a breadbag attached to the airlock or, in my case, a tube poking out of the stopper. I fill the breadbag w/ Co2, then attach to the tube. Similar to TheBishop's method. i wanted something w/ no pressure that would find tiny leaks.

I also am trying to get the krausen catcher thing to work. I tried it before, using the one sold by NorCal, but it didn't suck anything back. There must be some small leak in the system that prevents suction.

I have a second version, one I made myself to take advantage of some smaller silicone tubing I have. There's a similar problem in that it's not perfectly sealed. When I open the fridge to check the beer, I get the fruity fermentation smell, which means there's a small leak somewhere. The jars bubbled just fine when the CO2 being produced was high, but now that it's still going but slowly, I can smell ferm gases inside the fridge, but no bubbling in the jar.

BTW, someone in another thread (Doug, I think, but not certain) had a formula for figuring out the amount of gas that would be sucked back. Based on an assumption of 1.5 gallons of headspace, the formula indicated that .44 quarts of gas would be sucked back. Or less than half a quart jar of star-san.

Trying to figure out where these leaks are coming from. Any suggestions please sing out. Can be the connection of the hose to the tube, the stopper, or the lid on the fermenter.

 

[MSK_Chess]

Only about .5 litres assuming 1.5 gallon head space gets sucked back. Interesting. Your fermenting fridge is almost exactly the same as mine.