Will my sight glass contaminate my beer?

I ordered a site glass for my boil kettle. I was going to add it this weekend, but then I started to wonder if liquid inside the sight glass will reach boiling temperatures?

Will any contaminating bugs survive the mash and be able to live in the sight glass while the wort is boiling?

I doubt the sight glass reaches boiling temperatures. So after I chill and drain the kettle, the sight glass empties back into the kettle with the cool clear wort. Thus inoculating it with some nasties.

Am I just over thinking this?

you are over thinking it. rdwhahb

Spray a little StarSan through it before you boil. It'll probably be fine regardless.

You'll be lucky if your sightglass doesn't boil the wort. That makes a mess. It WILL reach into the high 100's though and 60 minutes of that will kill anything.

I had the same Idea of site glass on the boil kettle, but I work in food plant and have to deal with micro issues. I decided not to go with the site glass. Our kill step is at 187 degrees Fahrenheit, I feel that it's not worth the site glass.

Convective currents will rotate the wort in/out of the sightglass. I've seen it by watching hot-break material go round and round.

Just blow in the top of the tube to replace the wort if it worries you.

Trust me, it's not a problem. If it were, all of my batches would be infected. There's probably more contamination risk already in the fermenter than anything you'd get from the wort in a sightglass.

Thanks for the input guys. I didn't think that there would be enough to worry about with the proper pitch of healthy yeast.

My concerns were about an infection growing over multiple pitches. I plan on reusing my yeast from batch to batch. I thought this might be a source of possible infection. I guess the thing to do will be see how many batches I can go before I see an infection.

I plan on using one vial of WLP833 to make Munich Helles, German Pilsner, Bock, Dopplebock, Oktober Fest, and Munich Dunkle.

I'll post results if anything shows up...