I just noticed that my airlock opened up within the past day and I was wondering if it is ok to bottle still today?
It has been fermenting for past 2 weeks which is supposed to be enough but I am not sure if oxygen has ruined it.
3 Answers
What do you mean it "opened up"? Airlocks have to be open at both ends to work. Do you mean you somehow lost enough liquid that it's open all the way through? If so, you should be OK as long as you re-fill the airlock. CO2 is heavier than air, so there should be a "blanket" of it over your beer, which will minimize the chance of oxidation. If you caught it within a day or two, there's a very good chance there's no damage at all. I'd be more worried about what happened to the airlock -- where did the liquid go? If the temperature dropped enough that it got sucked into the beer, that indicates some fairly wide temperature swings that may have caused your fermentation to stall out. Be sure to check your final gravity before you bottle!
Well its likely fine. You may have some oxidation, but its not worth dumping the batch over at this point. Just learn from it and move on. Bottle your beer as normal and see what you get.
You should be monitoring the gravity and not relying on time to decide when to bottle. It should in a normal range for finished beer. If this was from a kit there's usually a suggested final gravity range somewhere.
Lastly, you should also rely on taste. If you wonder if something may have gone wrong with a beer you don't really know until you taste it. Taking a sample for graivity readings also serves to give you a chance to taste the progress. In time, you'll learn to predict how the taste related to issues that may come up later... like oxidation.
I presume you mean water evaporated out of the airlock or the rubber stopper detached enough to let air in contact. Either way, as long as you haven't disturbed the fermenter and the room doesn't have a lot of moving air, you're fine. C02 is more dense than regular air so it tends to stay in place. Even if the C02 is gone, it's probably going to be fine unless you shook the thing up with the airlock open. Even then, it's probably still drinkable. Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew.
