Disaster

Boundaryman

Have I ruined my batch of Cider,1 day to go in first fermentation,checking hydrometer reading and spilt some cleaning fluid from air lock into the brew. Will this kill the yeast and stop final fermentation stage.Don't want to bottle and waste my time if flavour is going to be affected.. Help !!

 

HBO_Staff

That's a pity, it's hard to know what to suggest here, we can't really say you can drink something with cleaning fluid in it unfortunately. However, we can tell you what we would probably do, and you can make an informed guess from there!

Point 1 - Don't drink cleaning fluid - we're not sure which cleaning fluid it was, possibly VWP? But either way, we can't say that this is OK.

What we would do though, and we don't recommend this to others - decide exactly how much fluid went into the brew, a few drops mixed in 23 litres is next to nothing, it would be very diluted, but we do not know and cannot say what would be classed as a safe level, the manufacturers may be able to advise if you know how much went into what volume. If it was very little, we would be tempted to check the gravity reading, and let it finish fermenting which it more than likey will, confirming extremely minor contamination, or otherwise. It may then be OK to bottle, and could possibly be OK.

However, we're sure you understand, we officially have to be very clear about this - Don't drink cleaning fluid. To avoid a recurrence we would suggest using water in your airlock, this way it cannot happen. Our friend Glenn at HomeBeerBrewery on Youtube uses Vodka in his airlock, again if this was spilt accidentally you would not have to discard the brew so may be worth considering. We do feel your pain, it is annoying and frustrating when something like this goes wrong, thankfully it is rare

Boundaryman

Thank You.It was only a very small amount of VWP, will think on it..Thanks again.