Would Vodka Spoil a Fermentation?

[Hop To It]

Hi,

I have just finished an all grain brew, pitched my yeast, sealed the FV and put the bubbler on with vodka in as the seal.

As I picked up the FV to put it into the brew fridge I noticed some of the vodka bubbled over into the FV!

Would this spoil the fermentation?

Cheers

 

[divrack]

I'm afraid you'll have to pour it all down the toilet.
After it's finished fermenting perfectly and you have drunk it all that is.

 

[Hop To It]

My heart stopped when I read your first line!

 

[divrack]

My heart stopped when I read your first line!

Eehyo

 

[Honk]

It will be fine, good job you had vodka in the airlock.

 

[Hop To It]

Cheers all

 

[Dutto]

Please STOP ME if:

• I suggest that I use vodka (or any other spirit) in an air-lock!
• Anyone sees me reaching for an airlock with a view to drinking the contents!

 

[Hoppyland]

Err..... why vodka??
Oh, and I add my agreement that it won't affect your beer. (Neither would water..)

 

[Hop To It]

My thinking is if you have water sitting in a bubbler for two weeks it may start growing but vodka wouldn't.

I could be wrong but vodka seemed the logical choice.

 

[divrack]

My thinking is if you have water sitting in a bubbler for two weeks it may start growing but vodka wouldn't.

I could be wrong but vodka seemed the logical choice.

The only problem is it might lead to an infestation of tiny Russians.

 

[Hoppyland]

My thinking is if you have water sitting in a bubbler for two weeks it may start growing but vodka wouldn't.

I could be wrong but vodka seemed the logical choice.

Yep, I see your train of thought. But, unless your beer has foamed up and filled your airlock then nothing is going to grow in there, at least over a few weeks. Leave it for a month in bright sunlight & you might get some algal growth, but you're not going to do that & the algae aren't a problem anyway.
The water doesn't contain food for spoilage organisms. The bubbler is basically trapping air that might be sucked back into the fermentation vessel, and removing dust particles etc which may be carrying spoilage organisms. The trapping function seems, in practice, to be quite sufficient - you don't need anything else in there to kill these fungi or bacteria.

 

[dad_of_jon]

Yep, I see your train of thought. But, unless your beer has foamed up and filled your airlock then nothing is going to grow in there, at least over a few weeks. Leave it for a month in bright sunlight & you might get some algal growth, but you're not going to do that & the algae aren't a problem anyway.
The water doesn't contain food for spoilage organisms. The bubbler is basically trapping air that might be sucked back into the fermentation vessel, and removing dust particles etc which may be carrying spoilage organisms. The trapping function seems, in practice, to be quite sufficient - you don't need anything else in there to kill these fungi or bacteria.

but a vodka or more specifically a gin airlock is going to be so much more fun if it gets sucked into the brew.

 

[Hoppyland]

I think it might be more fun to try sucking up the vodka or gin through an airlock - in fact I sense a Christmas party game coming on.......

 

[Dutto]

My thinking is if you have water sitting in a bubbler for two weeks it may start growing but vodka wouldn't.

I could be wrong but vodka seemed the logical choice.

It's a great choice - but I prefer using Tesco Thin Bleach (at 37p a litre) and water for the same reasons and much less expense! (Unless you know a place where you can buy vodka a 37p a litre!)

 

[Hop To It]

I'm always on the lookout for cheap however would the bleach destroy the beer if it accidentally got sucked into the FV like mine did?

 

[Dutto]

No. Ordinary bleach is one of the top World Health Authority lists for making water potable.

I usually us 1:4 mix with water and even if the whole lot went into a 23 litre brew it wouldn't affect the fermentation or the taste. Plus, if ANY of the liquid gets sucked into a brew round a typical "S" type airlock then the airlock has been grossly over-filled.

The purpose of an airlock is to prevent air from diffusing into the top of a brew during and after fermentation.

The molecules of a gas move at about 0.5 metres per second (as an example, think how quick a fart can move across a room) but as long as there is liquid in the "U" at the bottom then no air can diffuse through the airlock.

The reason I use a Blow-Off system is in case the brew gets over active and foams up and out of the FV. In this case even a Blow-Off system can be of limited use (check out the photograph of what can happen if you use too small a bottle) and an airlock would be totally overwhelmed.

Enjoy!

 

[Drunkula]

would the bleach destroy the beer

It's not good. It can react with the beer to make chlorophenols that taste like plastic/vinyl/elastoplasts and it takes very little to make it happen. I had it happen just from not swilling bottles with a no-rinse solution of 8ml of thin bleach per litre where it turned out the thin bleach wasn't thin. They were draining in a rack for ages, too, and the beer was still awful.

 

[Dutto]

....... where it turned out the thin bleach wasn't thin. .......

"Thin Bleach" has three features:

1. It is always less than 4% NaOCl (Sodium Hypochlorite).
2. It is NOT viscous and therefore doesn't cling to things.
3. It easily mixes with water to produce a solution that will kill bacteria.

This is why they don't sell Thin Bleach to clean toilets and why they have that funny shaped neck on products like Toilet Duck, so that the "Thick Bleach" can be squirted up into the water outlets of a toilet bowl; where it sticks to the porcelain!

Quite a few members of the Forum sanitise their brewing equipment with Thin Bleach.

 

[Hop To It]

Thanks all for the very useful info, good to see there is more than one way to skin the cat!

 

[Hoppyland]

With beer there's always more than one way to skin the cat! Most experienced brewers have their own system well worked out, and it produces great beer most of the time. The rub is, talk to another experienced brewer & they'll do things differently - maybe very differently. But, we're talking craft, or even art here - not science. So, very few (even home) brewers will get up on their high horse and say "I'm right - the rest of you are talking crap". And, if anyone does, then you can instantly identify them as being wrong. Almost certainly. Well, pretty near almost certainly............