Beer Forum

My award winning IPA - or at least it is the most refined recipe I have for any style (!) - was kegged this morning. The process from recipe to fermentation to kegging was flawless, I couldn't be more happy. Crash cooled it overnight and kegged it this morning but...

I cleaned & sanitized the keg and attached CO2 to pump out the starsan, got it all out but maybe not. I forgot to actually empty out the damn keg before I started filling it with my beer. So I am not sure how much, maybe quite a bit, of starsan was in the keg when I filled it. There certainly was quite a bit of starsan foam. God what a nightmare! I realized I had not completely emptied the keg immediately after I started siphoning into the keg and watched, appalled, as the foam went up with the filling, thinking to myself "noooo, my beer, my beer, what have I done...!!"

So if I had a fair amount - possibly a 1/2 quart - of starsan in my keg and topped it up with 5 gallons of beer what would the result be? Will this be like a little water diluting the beer or did I just ruin a batch of beer?

Steve da sleeve

I think it will be pretty much like watering it down a bit. I did the same thing a few months ago with a small beer (not much to hide behind) and it did not seem to hurt it much. Even got a medal for it, I think.

I doubt there's any damage. If you emptied it with Co2 to the point it was spitting out the shaving cream consistency foam, I'm sure there was not much left. I always have the foam shooting out the top when I fill my kegs and don't notice any problems. At least you know anything that tried to sneak in the top of the keg when you were filling got killed off right away by the foam.

There is always a small puddle of StarSan in the bottom of my kegs when I push it out with CO2. I typically turn the keg over and dump the small amount that remains out and flush the keg with a few more times with CO2 before starting the transfer.

I did suck a tiny amount of StarSan in to my last batch as I tried for the first time cold crashing while the beer was still in the carboy before moving it over to the keg. As the gas in the blowoff tube cools, it shrinks and creates a vacuum. What is the best way to avoid this? I pulled out the blowoff tube, covered the opening with foil and transferred to a keg the next morning hoping that there was still a blanket of CO2 on top of the beer. It does drop out a lot of material - but in the past I would crash in the keg and just pour off the first pint after a week. Not sure which way is better.

There was an episode where Justin tells the maker of StarSan (Charlie Talley) that he racked a 5 gallon batch onto something like a gallon of starsan, realized it happened, and then dumped the batch. Charlie basically told him that the beer should have turned out just fine. The constituent of StarSan would break down to fairly normal ions and actually feed the yeast. That might not have directly applied to finished beer but under a quart and I bet you won't even notice. It is food grade, no rinse, and a weaker acid than you find in your stomach at the recommended concentrations; you are diluting it massively with something like a 4.5 pH beer so you won't even really acidify your batch much. I say drink it. Then, if you aren't convinced that the impact was nothing to worry about, try this: take a glass of another batch and compare to another glass of the same beer but with a similar starsan concentration added (just less than an ounce added to a pint by my rough math). Then, take another pint and add the same amount of tap water. I am willing to bet, if you make the starsan with RO or DI water, you notice the minerals in the tap water before the starsan beer.

Imagine if it comes out to be the best beer you ever brewed...then you'll have to add a quart to the future recipes.

TheDarkSide wrote:Imagine if it comes out to be the best beer you ever brewed...then you'll have to add a quart to the future recipes.

That actually did occur to me!