Live, Learn, & Pass It On... But seriously, will I poison myself?

[Iowa Brewer]

Hey all,

I've been cold crashing a DIPA in the fermenter, bringing it down 10F/day to 36F. Went to take a look and realized that I should have disconnected the blow-off tube, because the lowering temp caused suction (new lesson for me!), it sucked the StarSan that I had in a 1gal jug into the carboy... and was sucking air.

*sigh*

Live and learn.
So, for any of you other beginners (I've been at this for 8 months), take heed!

If any of you know, aside from air getting in there (not much I can do about that now... and the DIPA has 8.1% ABV, so hoping that might kill of any beasties that snuck in), do I need to worry about the .25 gal of StarSan that inserted itself to my 6gal of beer? I'd hate to poison folks/myself!

Thanks, and happy brewing.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Star San is nontoxic.

However, beer is toxic, so don't drink too much at a time.

 

[Rob2010SS]

Taste and see what it tastes like. If it tastes ok, I'd proceed.

 

[Qhrumphf]

So the star-san may contribute an unpleasant off-flavor, but won't hurt you.

There's another more important lesson to learn from this:

If the star-san wasn't sucked back, air would have. Your experience shows just how much volume will be drawn in by the pressure reduction of cold crashing.

Without a pressurized container, you create a vacuum. It'll have to be replaced with something. Even in a perfectly sealed comtainer that can hold a mild vacuum, as soon as you break it you'll still suck in air.

In the professional (and well equipped homebrewer) world, crashing is done with the fermenter under CO2 pressure, so no vacuum is created.

In the less well equipped homebrewer world, there are ways to allow only (or at least mostly) CO2 to be drawn back in, not air. The easiest is to replace the airlock/blowoff with a balloon at the tail end of fermentation and let it inflate so that when crashing that CO2 gets drawn back. There are other methods using multiple chambered airlocks that more or less do the same thing.

Barring any of that, the lesson is: skip the cold crash entirely. The *inherent* oxidation damage far outweighs the clarity benefit.

 

[bleme]

I've drank a glass of StarSan before. It would probably be better with ice, but it wasn't awful. A little lemony...