Infected beer? No! Broken Hydrometer...

[Scott Ickes]

I brewed a Russian Imperial Stout two weeks ago and parti-gyled a dry stout off of it.

The gravity on the RIS was 1.024 going into the secondary on vanilla beans and cacao nibs.

I racked the Dry Stout to secondary, so that I could harvest the yeast.  I tried to measure the gravity of it, but it went to the bottom of my new tube that I had just purchased (the old one had warped due to me putting really hot wort in it).  The new tube was shorter than the old one and my hydrometer was hitting bottom.  It was reading about 1.000.  I thought I had an infection.

When I was cleaning up afterwards, I went to put my hydrometer away and noticed it was full of starsan solution.  It had a hairline crack in it.

I must have let it drop to hard into my starsan bucket between the first beer and the second one just a little too hard.

Now I have a reason to purchase a refractometer!!

[all grain]

 1st off, shame on you for treating your equipment like that. I mean, warping plastic, throwing fragile glass instruments around, what are you new at this making beer thing. LOL.
  In all seriousness, sounds like a vary good reason to buy a refractometer. just don't drop it in the kettle.