zeg
Well-Known Member
Ok, I can see I'm going to have to follow through on the crazy idea I had in the shower last week. I'm going to get some Petri dishes and some agar and run some tests. It shouldn't be too hard to get results conclusive enough to use in homebrewing contexts, I don't think.
Plan would be something like:
- 2 month-old (maybe older) starsan (hard water, distilled water)
- 2 fresh starsan (hard, distilled)
- 2 no starsan (hard, distilled)
- 2 no application at all
Somehow, inoculate all of these (except for one of the no application) with kitchen / brewery bacteria/yeast, then apply the sanitizer and sit back and let 'em go. The other untouched sample is kept as a control.
I'm not sure of the best ways to do inoculation or application, suggestions welcome. I saw a thread describing someone's test of starsan vs iodophor (I think), that used paper circles soaked in the sanitizer, but they seemed to have some trouble with evaporation. It could be a spritz, but I'm worried that this wouldn't be a good test of surface sanitization since the agar medium isn't really a hard, sanitizable surface.
Plan would be something like:
- 2 month-old (maybe older) starsan (hard water, distilled water)
- 2 fresh starsan (hard, distilled)
- 2 no starsan (hard, distilled)
- 2 no application at all
Somehow, inoculate all of these (except for one of the no application) with kitchen / brewery bacteria/yeast, then apply the sanitizer and sit back and let 'em go. The other untouched sample is kept as a control.
I'm not sure of the best ways to do inoculation or application, suggestions welcome. I saw a thread describing someone's test of starsan vs iodophor (I think), that used paper circles soaked in the sanitizer, but they seemed to have some trouble with evaporation. It could be a spritz, but I'm worried that this wouldn't be a good test of surface sanitization since the agar medium isn't really a hard, sanitizable surface.