O.K. I'm just sharing my misfortune to help keep others from making the same mistake. About two weeks ago I took my carboy of Lambic out of the fermentation cooler and set it up on top just to let it warm a bit and keep the bacteria going. It had been souring for about three months. But of course, after taking it out of the cooler, the weather got a bit warmer. So the beer now being stored at ambient temperature in my garage got warmer as well. It did not get hot enough to hurt the beer though, so I didn't worry about it to much. Fast forward to last weekend (Friday night to be exact). I go into my garage to work on some small projects, and I turn on the window a/c unit. I forget to turn it off until Sunday morning when I went in to begin, what I thought was going to be, a great brew day. To my dismay I find that the beer had dropped in temperature enough to suck nearly a half gallon of star san up the blow of tube and into my beer. Luckily I had plenty of homebrew on hand to "cheer me up." I know some people have said Star San is not supposed to hurt you if you drink a small amount, but it was only a three gallon carboy of beer. I just can't see nearly a half gallon to three gallons being a safe ratio. Plus, being a Lambic that I was planning to age for at least another nine months, I really don't think its worth investing that much time in a beer that will probably taste like Star San. So in short, don't be a dumbass like me. Turn the a/c off. Cheers.
Was this a Better bottle carboy? Just curious... I hate moving my better bottles as they suck in sanitizer/air lock liquid.
I'll go out on a limb and say that lots of us have gone the wrong way with a blow off tube. Cold crashing is another great way to add another pint or 2 of crummy Star San to your batch. Live and learn.
Boy howdy that sucks! At least you ruined it now and not 6 months from now. I know that's not much consolation, but it's all I've got. Side note, I don't think there is any reason to put StarSan in the blowoff container. Theoretically, if you hook the blow off up during the lag phase, you could get a sneaky fruit fly or something up the tube, but I'll take a 1% chance of a single fruit fly over some of the suck back disasters I've heard. Once the beer is fermenting, much less fermenting vigorously enough to start pumping out of the tube, it's exit only as it were.
Maybe there is something going on here I don't understand, but why would you have a blow-off tube still hooked up at 3 months into fermentation? Why wasn't the tube switched out for an airlock?
i'll agree and add use the cheapest vodka $10 can buy you to use in the airlock. Worst case scenario, you suck up a little ethanol.
I've racked 5 gal of a brown ale onto 3/4 gal of starsan by accident. Scored 38 in competition. I'd keep the beer.
I had every intention of doing that, but my old friend procrastination and I decided that it could be put off till another day.
