Grrrr...should I dump this? (Calling all chemists)

Northern Brewer General
1

So I’ve been messing with IPA recipes and techniques. I have never bothered with trying to weight down hop bags for dry-hopping, but I thought I’d give it a try this time. As I am not a 19th-century British schoolchild, I do not have marbles on hand, which I know are the recommended weight of choice. I was racking my brain for something to use, then I saw my tool box. Why not use the attachments for a socket wrench? Stainless steel, able to be sanitized…boom, I have weights.

Then after muscling them into the carboy neck (they bunched up in the bag and it was harder than I thought), and racking the beer, I noticed that despite the weight, the hop bags were still on top of the solution. Fantastic. Well the hops were wet, and hopefully it didn’t matter. Later found out that weighting down the hop bag really isn’t worth the trouble.

THEN I found out that the socket wrench attachments weren’t stainless steel. They were chrome/chromium-plated steel. Usually for socket wrenches, they use cheap chrome.
Chrome is toxic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium_toxicity

So I ran home, racked the beer out of the carboy, and it does smell fantastic. It seemed to taste good, but I haven’t been feeling great and I’m not sure my palette is the sharpest.

The attachments did not appear to have any corrosion. There were some flecks on the inside of them, but then I looked at the attachmenets I didn’t use, and they had the flecks as well. However, I do know that beer pH is usually well below 5, and could likely corrode something like this.

As I do not want to poison myself, my wife, friends, or family, should I dump this beer? Its one of my better IPAs, and would sting like hell to dump it.

I have the beer sitting in a CO2-purged bottling bucket right now with some gelatin.
Anyone familiar with corrosion of chromium on steel?

2

i don’t think you have anything to worry about. since it didn’t rust i doubt the chrome would have leached off the socket. how long was the socket in the beer?

3

I don’t either have marbles laying around. And I dry hop in the keg. I have been using sanitized shot glasses. Only issues is that if you wanted to dry hop prior you are up a creek, if you use carboys instead of buckets.

Which I do.

But I like to harvest most of my yeast. so I don’t really want to dryhop in the fermentor anyway. And I don’t secondary many if any these days.

4

They were submerged for just under 5 days…not sure if its just front of mind, but now when I taste it, it tastes metallic.

5

If it did taste metallic I would do like the old saying goes " When in doubt, don’t drink the kool-aid" or in this case beer. Take it as a lesson learned. We have all been there at one time or another.

*edited to correct spelling

6

The toxicity is in the process, not the finished product. A metallic taste could come from hops (Willamette), or iron from the socket if the plating is chipped off.