Did I just ruin my beer

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Djsupreme98

New Member
Joined
Dec 16, 2022
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
United kingdom
Hi Everyone,

Please could you give me advice as I am rather worried I just ruined my beer.

Today I started fermentation and add my RAPT hydrometer pill in. Only to realise 9 hours a later I'm not getting any telemetry back.
I then decided to open the fermenter and I santitised my hands with a spray of starsan on my hands and pulled out my fermenter. Unfortunately two of my fingers touched the wort.

I then got it started up, starsan the pill and put it in and closed the fermenter.

My question is, is my beer ruined now?

Thanks in advance
 
You'd be surprised what you can get away with and still get a great beer. Never count it as lost until it's finished fermenting and you have tried it. I'm sure it will be fine!
 
Reminds me of an episode of the Hairy Bikers visiting a brewery in Belgium(?), taking a sample from an huge open FV, tasting it then chucking back the remainder. Loads of comments on that, they could have spoiled the brew, etc. Beer yeast is a tough cookie, you really need to go wrong big time before you spoil anything. The result may not be ideal, but then even with the best of precautions it may not be.
 
People think of beer as either contaminated/infected or not. In reality every single beer we make is infected in some way. As the air is full of yeast and bacteria and, regardless of how hard we try, it would be absolutely impossible to keep the beer completely sterile. There will always be plenty of microbes that get into the wort, always. So we shouldn't be asking ourselves IF a beer is infected, but, to what extent.
 
Every time I have used leaf hops (which is rarely, maybe 4 or 5 brews, only if they’ve been on offer or I’ve inherited some), I’ve had to stick my hand into the boiler to unblock the tap when transferring to FV.

Beer has been absolutely fine every time.
 
People think of beer as either contaminated/infected or not. In reality every single beer we make is infected in some way. As the air is full of yeast and bacteria and, regardless of how hard we try, it would be absolutely impossible to keep the beer completely sterile. There will always be plenty of microbes that get into the wort, always. So we shouldn't be asking ourselves IF a beer is infected, but, to what extent.
People need to remember that the yeasts we use to make beer are strong enough to overcome most bits of wild yeasts that may get in and as the alcohol level increases that will help protect the beer.
 
People need to remember that the yeasts we use to make beer are strong enough to overcome most bits of wild yeasts that may get in and as the alcohol level increases that will help protect the beer.
I completely agree with you. I didn't mean to make it sound like it's impossible to make a clean beer, quite the opposite! I should have added that despite the "plenty of microbes that get into the wort" a good pitch of a strong army of yeast will completely overwhelm the few vagrant cells that get in.
 
I'm wondering what people make of this. It was Kveik Voss. I don't remember seeing so much matter sitting on the top in other brews. Smells fine and tasted okay so I'm assuming it's fine.
PXL_20230119_203917876.jpg
 
I'm wondering what people make of this. It was Kveik Voss. I don't remember seeing so much matter sitting on the top in other brews. Smells fine and tasted okay so I'm assuming it's fine.
View attachment 81040

I think that looks fine. How long has it been fermenting? Even though beer brewed with Voss can reach FG In just a few days, I still leave it for The same 10 days or so before cold crashing and packaging.
 
Cracked open a bottle to taste and it's fine but under-carbonated. Just haven't seen as much floating as that.
5 days. I hit my OG after 12 hours. I done the same with a tropical stout before Christmas and it turned out lovely.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top