Hy all. My last brew day I forgot to put the drain tube into my fermenter. As I was filling it up from the brew kettle, I remembered that I hadn’t added it. So, the only thing I could think to do was drain all the wort from the fermenter back into the brew kettle, sanitize the drain tube and insert it, and then fill the fermenter back up. Obviously I kicked up a bunch of trub doing this, and I’m hoping that it’ll just settle out in the fermenter. But I’m worried that I also had to open my fermenter ball valve to drain the wort. Is that going to cause an issue for me when I go to drain the finished beer? Should I avoid using the fermenter’s ball valve and use a siphon instead? I clean my valves after each use - all of them are three piece and I take them apart to clean. But is opening it to drain the wort and then letting it sit for 2 weeks going to risk infection or some off flavors? Thanks.
Probably you will be fine if you sanitized it well. You could always zip tie a baggy around the valve to keep stuff out of it (bugs, etc).
Did you flush the open side of the ball valve line with water or sanitizer after draining? If not, almost certainly there will be unwanted microbes that have grown on the open side, and your beer will pick these up as it drains. This won’t really matter if you keg; cold crashing will adequately suppress their growth and activity. If you bottle, could be an issue.
+1. I do this out of habit when I put the fermenter in the ferment fridge and before I attach the transfer tubing to the spigot to keg it. A few squirts of iodophors for insurance goes a long way.