The weather is warming up... fruit flies and gnats!

[Elrond]

I was bottling and I noticed a fruit fly (or maybe a gnat) floating around my operation. I ignored him because it's a 10.6% beer, so not much worry about an infection now, but what about when I'm wort chilling?
If a fruit fly flies into my wort while it's chilling down to 75° to pitch the yeast, and it drowns, will my batch be ruined?

 

[jrgtr42]

|It's really hard to truly ruin beer. Obviously, keep those guys out at all costs, but if one gets in, it's not the end of the world - there's no guarantee it would carry anything, and with good yeast management, it would outlast anything that the fly would bring to the party.

 

[BrewZer]

Fruit flies eat rotting fruit. Rotting fruit contains all sorts of microcritters that can severely affect your brew's ultimate flavors.

After fermentation, I'd say just keep that thing out of a bottle. Remove it if it's floating and convenient.

The hotter the wort when he lands in it, the better. But if he croaks in the cooled wort before the pitch, I'd get that thing out of the bucket as soon as possible with a sanitized instrument, preferably something that sucks the creature into a cavity, like a wine thief or a siphon hose. Knowing I've got a corpse in my fermenter would drive me nuts.

Ultimately, of course, rule #1 applies: RDWHAHB.