I went to dry hop a gallon batch of saison today and found this: As you can see, the plastic cap on the 1 gallon carboy completely broke. There is no way that I screwed it on so tight that it would do that. I can only assume that the extra vigorous fermentation caused the plastic lid to break. Is this even possible? Needless to say, the beer had been exposed to air for weeks. Smelled boozy, cidery, and sweet. First batch I've ever had to pour down the drain. Very disappointed. At least it wasn't a 5 gallon batch. Have you ever seen this before?
Why did you dump it? I have always use a cork so I have never use that screw in top. I would have at least bottled/kegged it to see how it turned out before dumping.
I wouldn't have dumped it either. How long was it like that? There's plenty of people here who have had their airlocks blow straight off and their beers have turned out fine. The layer of co2 caused by fermentation should keep any air out.
Those plastic screw on tops suck. I could never get them to screw on tightly, the threads are off on them or something. Go with a rubber bung with a hole, I forget the size, but I'm sure the folk at your LHBS could help you out.
During active fermentation, the CO2 being produced would tend to blow away O2 and other gasses. But once that's done, the CO2 won't block O2 if the fermenter is open to the air. See Fick's Law. That's not to say that I would have necessarily dumped the batch. I have seen this more than once with Starsan lids after a few loosen/tighten cycles. My guess is that your lid was just about to give up the fight and the fermentation pressure finished the job.
not no go off on an obvious tangent, but I've lost two bottles of StarSan to this problem. Any suggestions for a handy replacement? And I wouldn't have tossed the Saison without first confirming it was bad. I've held on to beers even after confirming they were bad, hoping that maybe they would come around. (Denial can be mighty powerful)
I replaced my broken Starsan cap with one from a a bottle of Everclear (used for sanitizing only!). Much better lid.
At first, I taped the cracked lid closed again with duct tape. Then I started saving starsan lids from bottles that didn't break.
The beer was exposed for several week, best I can tell. Active fermentation has been over for 3+ weeks. Pretty sure it needed to be dumped.
I always use fermcap and never have problems. For some reason I've forgotten to use it in the last 2 batches. :-/
So will starsan go bad if it's not capped tightly? I've been using a bottle with a broken lid for a while. I figured since it's a sanitizer, it would be fine.
Well it looks like the airlock was nice and clean so I'm guessing it clogged before junk got up inside. Probably a good thing the cap broke before the pressure turned the airlock into a missile. Cleaning beer off the ceiling is a P.I.T.A. and pisses off the wife / g.f..
Hmm, I've never tried it, but I like to see that huge krausen even though it's not wholly necessary for good beer. But it makes sense to use it in 1 gallon batches.
I really don't know if anything will happen other than evaporation. And evaporation is the reason I duct taped the crack.
I have used those caps for long aging a sour and it turned to vinegar w/o breaking or running the airlock dry. They let in lots of O2. Not using them anymore.
