I had a major "aw $h1t" today with my Heady Topper clone that was 9 days into primary. Some of my swamp cooler water leaked into my primary through the bottling spigot! My SG yesterday for 10.5 qts of beer prior to the mishap was 1.011. After the mishap it's now 1.010. Since that extra point lowering was not due to yeast converting sugars to alcohol what should I base my FG on? My guess is the ABV will be lower than what would be calculated from FG of 1.011 prior to the dilution. I was also hoping the yeast were going to bring me down an additional point or two over next 7-14 days. They probably still will.
For the long story of what happened I am fermenting in a 3G PET conical fermentor from Brewdemon. When I checked on things this morning I noticed my volume was lower by about .5 quart. When I looked at the water in my Rubbermaid tub swamp cooler/heater it was brownish. I reached down to make sure the transfer spigot was still closed and secure. This is where I discovered it was loose. I quickly put my sanitized brew gloves on and reached into fermentor to tighten the nut when I discovered it wouldn't tighten and the spigot became looser. The threaded through fitting had sheared. I quickly sanitized a second conical and racking cane and transferred the beer. In the process of lowering the volume in original fermentor the water and beer mix in my swamp cooler must have leaked back into the original fermentor and I actually racked about 0.4 quarts extra volume (based on volumetric marks on fermentor) into my backup fermentor, crap! I checked my gravity again where I determined I'd diluted my SG down by one point. According to the dilution calculator on brewersfriend.com to drop 2.5G of 1.011 beer by one point would require 0.25G (1 qt) dilution water! I know for a fact I did transfer full quart extra.
I'm now on the fence of do I take this batch to completion (I've got 2 dry hop schedules yet to complete and of course bottle conditioning) and hope I don't get an infection. I'm not worried about affects of chlorine as the water in the tub had been there for several days allowing chlorine to off gas. I'm certainly not going to have a true Heady clone as my OG was 10 points to low to begin with and now this dilution snafu. Argh!!
For the long story of what happened I am fermenting in a 3G PET conical fermentor from Brewdemon. When I checked on things this morning I noticed my volume was lower by about .5 quart. When I looked at the water in my Rubbermaid tub swamp cooler/heater it was brownish. I reached down to make sure the transfer spigot was still closed and secure. This is where I discovered it was loose. I quickly put my sanitized brew gloves on and reached into fermentor to tighten the nut when I discovered it wouldn't tighten and the spigot became looser. The threaded through fitting had sheared. I quickly sanitized a second conical and racking cane and transferred the beer. In the process of lowering the volume in original fermentor the water and beer mix in my swamp cooler must have leaked back into the original fermentor and I actually racked about 0.4 quarts extra volume (based on volumetric marks on fermentor) into my backup fermentor, crap! I checked my gravity again where I determined I'd diluted my SG down by one point. According to the dilution calculator on brewersfriend.com to drop 2.5G of 1.011 beer by one point would require 0.25G (1 qt) dilution water! I know for a fact I did transfer full quart extra.
I'm now on the fence of do I take this batch to completion (I've got 2 dry hop schedules yet to complete and of course bottle conditioning) and hope I don't get an infection. I'm not worried about affects of chlorine as the water in the tub had been there for several days allowing chlorine to off gas. I'm certainly not going to have a true Heady clone as my OG was 10 points to low to begin with and now this dilution snafu. Argh!!
