Nearly finished chilling my wort and everything was sterilized, The hose to the chiller popped off and water shot to the ceiling and dripped a lot into my sterilized wort. I’m assuming if I raise the temperature and boil for another 10 minutes and then cool back down everything will be OK to proceed? My nice big whirlpool hops will be more bitter and not as tasty but I think the beer will be salvaged? Any opinions?
I would bring it back to a boil. It’s not the water but what the water washed off the ceiling I’d be concerned with.
This happened to me once and hose water went into my wort. My wort was not cool yet and it was a very small amount of water so I fixed the chiller and kept chilling. Also, our water has a good amount of chlorine in it so my guess was that very little would be living in it. The beer turned out fine. Bringing it back to a boil is good insurance though. My guess is that the finished beer will be nice.
The EPA recommended boiling water for 1 minute to sanitize, 10 minutes is probably overkill.
Thanks, I’ll probably boil for five minutes then proceed. “Funny” how many little things can go wrong on a brew day.
If it’s only a tiny bit of water, I wouldn’t worry about it and just proceed.
Is this a case where whatever might have fallen into the wort, bacteria, mold, wild yeast or other fungus would probably not be able to compete with a healthy pitch of cultured yeast? Thats my take on it and I think I would just roll the dice.
I think the question would be “which organism is going to colonize this volume of wort first… bacteria or yeast?”. Bringing it back to a boil is a way to put the whole disaster out of your mind.
Well, my paranoia got the best of me and I boiled for seven minutes and then chilled down and proceeded. This is my house IPA that I’ve made a ton of times so I’m going to chalk it up to an experiment to see how it taste compared to how I know it should tastes. I’m betting on more bitter with less hop flavor since the large whirlpool addition went back to boil. And a little higher ABV. Good experiment I guess. In about a month I will report back for any who are interested.
Absolutely, one of them is going to colonize it. To me though, I am making an assumption that the one that already has the head start in a accelerated growth phase (cultured yeast) would win that battle. OP might be right in boiling though. Let us know how it turns out.
That’s my thought too. A quick trip up to 162F to pasteurize probably wouldn’t hurt if that’s best for your piece of mind, but unless I was planning to repitch my yeast a few generations I’d just let it ride. I assume that my large pitch of yeast was going to take over before any potential contaminants.
yup. the idea that the wort is “sterile” is only half true. as soon as it leaves the kettle in 99% of homebrew scenarios it is running into stuff, just in very small amounts. a pitch of active or dry yeast just overtakes it and creates conditions that inhibit other micro-organisms growth.
lol. I remember one time tightening hose clamps on my homemade IC as the wort had begun to chill. I dropped the screwdriver into the kettle full of wort. In my case I realized the wort was still at around 180F or so, and I let it ride. The beer came out just fine, and I realized RDWHAHB. 
Sounds like you did the right thing, although if concerned of making it too hoppy by reintroducing a boil, I agree you could have alternately hit and held (20 minutes) pasteurization temps (162-165F) and then re-chilled. You wouldn’t get much added hop utilization at that temp.
I went to a Hydra IC.