thermometer broke

Arbe0

Arbe0

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my thermometer broke and little black pellets when everywhere. It is a floating one with red top, the bottom of it is what broke. Not sure if any of the pellets got into my wort and am concerned. What are these pellets and should I be concerned?
 
The black balls are made from Lead you do not want them in your beer you won't be able to smell it you won't be able to taste it but you don't want them in there
 
thaks for the info crunk
 
Yea I had same thing happen to me awhile ago arbe0 it was in my mash no difference in beer taste just sucked plus I usually give my spent grain to the cooks so had to be careful.
 
All of the brewing thermometers I have seen are mercury free and use steel as ballast , main concern would be any shards of glass.
I'm still on my first 1 !
 
finished the mash, did my boil, and now in the fermenter. gonna go ahead and make beer with it all it can do is kill me..(prop me up beside the juke box when I'm gone)
Learned a lesson, from now on I am not going to use one that breaks. I have 2 metal ones with the long stems and round face they work good. just liked having the floating one in my mash tun.
 
I'm sure it will all sink to the bottom in the fermentor anyways:rolleyes:.
 
I use a dial type meat thermometer , it has a little Tupperware bowl with a hole in base so just floats around happily , almost indestructible !
 
Bad luck mate. I go by the age old rule
"If in doubt chuck it out."
But thats just me. Being thouse thermometers are supposed to be food grade it should be Mercury free and lead free. So i would be more worried about glass in there.
 
Tupperware bowl huh... mmm nice idea. I normally just stick it in the wort when I use that one and hold on tight so it doesn't fall in.
 
Arbe0 said:
my thermometer broke and little black pellets when everywhere. It is a floating one with red top, the bottom of it is what broke. Not sure if any of the pellets got into my wort and am concerned. What are these pellets and should I be concerned?
Click to expand...
If you suspect the glass or the pellets got into your beer, dump it. The glass will rip your digestive tract to shreds and the lead will poison you. Double that if you think the liquid in the thermometer was mercury.
 
I wouldn't take the chance I just scrap it start over with a new batch
 
Arbe0 said:
finished the mash, did my boil, and now in the fermenter. gonna go ahead and make beer with it all it can do is kill me..(prop me up beside the juke box when I'm gone)
Learned a lesson, from now on I am not going to use one that breaks. I have 2 metal ones with the long stems and round face they work good. just liked having the floating one in my mash tun.
Click to expand...

If you don't dump it, you could double up a couple of paint strainer bags and rubber band them to the end of the transfer tube when you move your beer to the keg/bottling bucket. That *should* strain out any glass pieces that are big enough to cause injury, I think. I believe the holes in the bag are 260 microns. I'm not an expert on this so be careful. Bags/rubber bands need to be sanitized, of course.

These guys have some nice digital thermometers: http://www.thermoworks.com/RT610B-24

Btw, I swallowed a quarter once when I was in college. Nothing bad happened...yet...
 
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