Kinda screwed up?

[beattun]

Put down a Coopers European Lager kit 2 weeks ago, now what i do with my brews, is i put the fermenter into a kinda shallow laundry basket, thats half filled with water (i add icepacks and ice to the water after to get the initial temperature down)

So here I am, filling up my brew after adding the kit and BE2 and I realise that I've gone and left the tap open, as I watch my laundry tub water turn brown, quickly closed the tap, finished what I was doing and sealed up the fermenter with glad wrap.

Whats the chances of this one being infected from the water in the tub getting into the tap? is there any way i can know this before i possibly waste a load of time bottling it, and then suffer exploding bottles due to infection?

thanks in advance!

Brian.

[StuTee]

is there any way i can know this before i possibly waste a load of time bottling it, and then suffer exploding bottles due to infection?

Crazy-man talk, everyone knows bottling is the single most fun activity in the world. Nothing like that mild pain in the side from a prolonged fight with the bottle capper

[Biernut]

Brian; Unless bacteria can swim upstream against the current in a short amount of time I would say your chances against infection are pretty good. Tap off a sample and do a taste, if it has any off flavours after fermenting for two weeks then you are up the creek without a paddle. A bad beer IMHO may improve slightly over time but it will still be a bad beer. Casualties do happen from time to time and sometimes you get away with it and end up with a fine beer other times it is a complete disaster.
But like all screw ups I just put it behind me and move on to my next brew.

Cheers.........

[rwh]

I don't personally like that immersion of the fermenter technique, I suspect it's caused my only infected beers, possibly from insects falling into the water and contaminating the inside of the tap. I now always spray the inside of the tap outlet with sanitiser before racking or bottling.

Anyhoo. Yeah, taste the beer. If it's gone off then you should be able to tell that way. Look for a white skin on the surface (acetobacter) or excessive cloudiness (wild yeast). Or green blotches (mould). If those are all negative then you've probably dodged a bullet.

[beattun]

thanks guys, ill draw a sample tomorrow and check it out, theres mould on the outside on the fermenter, but shouldnt be a problem hey?

[KEG]

mould on the outside doesn't mean the beer's infected, but it is far from ideal. no offence intended, but it'd be a very good idea to clean up everything you use for brewing - you're playing with fire with those sort of conditions.

[beattun]

mould on the outside doesn't mean the beer's infected, but it is far from ideal. no offence intended, but it'd be a very good idea to clean up everything you use for brewing - you're playing with fire with those sort of conditions.

thanks, i was away for almost the full 2 weeks, there must have been water on the fermenter (outside), thats attracted the mould, ive wiped it off anywa

[Lachy]

Since you've had mould, I'd kinda recommend giving the outside of the fermenter a bit of a spray with sanitiser or bleach solution, just to make sure the mould spores are gone. Spores have a way of finding their way into things, and you certainly don't want them in your brew.

On a semi-related note, I was helping a mate put down a lager the other day, and in the absence of a brewfridge we were looking for the coolest part of the house. He mentioned an empty cupboard at the back of the house to me as being a possibility, saying that "he'd never really had any use for it". On opening it, it became readily apparent that it wasn't so much a cupboard as a giant mould colony... you see, on closer examination it seemed the previous tenant had used it for a small-scale hydroponics setup. This, of course, involved extended humidity and nice warm temperatures, and what also seemed to be bit of a leak in his nutrient supply. Needless to say, we ditched the idea of storing the fermenter in there.

[James L]

Dirty Dirty Spores...

[warra48]

OK OK OK girsl and boys, let's keep things clean, shall we ????????

[scanman]

Kinda VERY expensive I think is the answer to that one.

Can I ask what sort of beers technique you use to make beer?