Copper reacts with wort?

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yashicamat

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I made myself a copper wort immersion chiller which I used for the first time today. I had cleaned it with VWP sanitising solution, then rinsed thoroughly. What bothers me is that the whole coil was slightly dull when it went in (as you'd expect from unpolished metal) but when it came out of the wort, especially the base (where the cold water enters), was quite shiney. Now this suggests to me that something in the wort has stripped the oxidation off the coil but more worryingly that is presumably in my beer now.:(

I pitched a freshly washed Wyeast Brit Ale II into it and it's bubbling away happily after only a few hours, but I am worried that the flavour might have been effected. I realise that only time will tell on this, but does anyone know of this situation? Is it something of nothing?

Thanks.:)
 
Thanks guys. :) I was rather concerned earlier when I saw what was happening! I did'nt have any other way to cool down 4.5 gallons of wort so I just pushed through with hope!

Cheers.:mug:
 
Actually this ís bad for you. Copper is not good for you and it doesn't leave your body very very quickly at all once ingested. I don't understand why people here aren't worried by this.

Once your retinas turn blue, your hair turns spiky and you go nuckin' futs you'll regret it.

Make those damn things out of either just Iron or stainless steel, chromium and nickel aren't exceedingly healthy either but better than copper...
 
Does anyone have anything to add to Nerro's comments? I thought copper immersion chillers were sold by homebrew shops . . . . such things would surely need to be safe in order be on sale?
 
When did you do the brasso addition? If done too early it can lead to excessive polishing of the wort chiller. ;)
 
When you would need to be worried is if the copper is turning green and blue. if it was just darker I wouldn't worry for one moment. As mentioned in a book I am reading, people and breweries have been using copper for several hundred years.
 
Sure, I'll add something to Nerro's comments. He's full of crap. Copper is indeed good for you, and it's a necessary element of life. Copper is important for the formation of bone, hemoglobin and red blood cells. Copper also helps keeps nerves healthy, and is involved in hair and skin coloring and sensitivity to taste as well as aiding in the healing process.

My stepmother has a rare disease that doesn't let her body process out copper and other elements. She can't drink anything other than distilled water, because of mineral content. It's caused her joints to stiffen to the point it's hard for her to walk and talk, but she neither has blue retinas, spiky hair, or is crazy. The only time to worry about copper is when it gets green and and blue like the Statue of Liberty. The patina is toxic, but easily polishes off.
 
When copper tarnishes and then becomes clear again this is because the top layer of the copper has dissolved as aqeous Cu(II) ions. You're correct in saying that copper is an essential element but as Paracelsus used to say, it's all about the concentration. The amount of copper the wort comes into contact with is much larger in homebrewing then in professional brewing because they work with much much larger volumes, which makes for a much more sensible wort volume to copper surface area ratio.

The simple fact is that a daily intake of 10mg is plenty and that food serves easily in this demand. The fact that your stepmom doesn't show any of the symptoms (not blue retinas but yellow rings around them btw, I made a mistake) is because she has a copper deficiency. Copper surplus in the body is hard to relieve just like other heavy metal poisoning is. The simple fact of the matter being that heavy metals collect in the body and usually have a hard time leaving it. They are to be handled with a certain degree of caution, lead is not the only toxic metal (copper poisoning is a lot like arsenic poisoning for instance!).

The effect may take many years to reveal itself but once it does you're screwed! Be careful! If the cooler is covered in that ugly layer just rinse it in citric acid solution to make it nice and clear and quickly rinse it. It'll be nice and shiny and clear of soluble copper. It may seem like a stretch now but it's going to pay off in the long run.
 
When copper tarnishes and then becomes clear again this is because the top layer of the copper has dissolved as aqeous Cu(II) ions. You're correct in saying that copper is an essential element but as Paracelsus used to say, it's all about the concentration. The amount of copper the wort comes into contact with is much larger in homebrewing then in professional brewing because they work with much much larger volumes, which makes for a much more sensible wort volume to copper surface area ratio.

The simple fact is that a daily intake of 10mg is plenty and that food serves easily in this demand. The fact that your stepmom doesn't show any of the symptoms (not blue retinas but yellow rings around them btw, I made a mistake) is because she has a copper deficiency. Copper surplus in the body is hard to relieve just like other heavy metal poisoning is. The simple fact of the matter being that heavy metals collect in the body and usually have a hard time leaving it. They are to be handled with a certain degree of caution, lead is not the only toxic metal (copper poisoning is a lot like arsenic poisoning for instance!).

The effect may take many years to reveal itself but once it does you're screwed! Be careful! If the cooler is covered in that ugly layer just rinse it in citric acid solution to make it nice and clear and quickly rinse it. It'll be nice and shiny and clear of soluble copper. It may seem like a stretch now but it's going to pay off in the long run.
Wouldn't we all be insane by now? Don't they use copper in breweries. Didn't breweries use to (some still do) boil in copper kettles?

Sorry, but I think you are punching in the dark here.
 
At the beginning of my brewing process, I take my chiller and put it in a bucket of oxyclean. By the time it is needed in my wort, almost all the dark film is off the coils. I just spray it down with a hose real good and put it in the wort.
 
Copper is toxic to INVERTEBRATES so as long as you have a spine, you will be fine. If you have worms, it might help to get rid of 'em for you.
 
You don't immediately go nuts or something, there will be more subtle changes and problems that you probably won't even associate with anything like this when they happen.

And copper is also a required trace element for invertebrates, the lethal dose is just lower (like I said before, look up "paracelsus").
 
I agree with Nerro copper is toxic. Breweries do use copper, but it is clean copper. If your chiller is clean and shinny going in and coming out the amounts of copper added to your wort should be at a safe level. If your chiller is dull and oxidized and comes out shiny you have left that copper oxide in your wort. Keep your copper clean.
 
EvilTOJ's mother-in-law appears to have Wilson's disease, which is a hereditary disease of copper storage resulting in accumulation of copper, leading to the rings of copper deposits in the cornea (not retina) and leading more seriously to cirrhosis of the liver (unrelated to excessive alcohol intake).

Nerro, you may want to check your facts. It is possible to have copper toxicity in the absence of the genetic defect of Wilson's disease, but that is most likely to happen in Indian children with another genetic defect. It is pretty unlikely unless you have these defects, or unless you consume gram quantities of copper salts, like copper sulfate. If you can drink beer with that much copper in it you are a better man than I. It is hard to imagine that being very tasty. If you did, you would get gastrointestinal symptoms first, like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

In 20+ years of practicing internal medicine I have never seen or heard of a case of copper toxicity. I won't lose sleep over the copper in my counterflow chiller.

Unless it is really poorly stored your chiller probably only has copper oxides on it. If you are leaching away these copper oxides the tubing should get thinner and eventually perforate. If that does not happen, then the wort is reducing the copper oxides back to metallic copper. That reaction would release a little oxygen into the wort, but not copper, as I recall my chemistry (It has been a lot of years).

For you guys who don't use something like Oxyclean on your chiller, does the copper tubing thin out over time?
 
The wort doesn't attack the copper, it attacks the oxide on the copper. Not the same thing by any strecth of the imagination.
 
On a sidenote, I considered the possibility of the wort reducing the CuO and Cu2O back to copper and water (never oxygen). This might be possible in the presence of reducing sugars like glucose and such. However those sugars only really reduce metal oxides in alkaline environments, wort is somewhat acidic and as such it is much more likely that the oxides simply go through some proton exchange to yield aqeous copper ions and water.
 
If you are REALLY worried, take a sample of your wort and send it off to Ward Labs and ask them to test for dissolved copper in solution.

My advice is RDWHAHB

Sean
 
Copper is traditional not only in brewing, but in cheese-making. Traditional Mountain cheese including Gruyere, Emmentaler (aka Swiss cheese) and Parmesan were all traditionally made in large copper pots, and still are to this day in the Alpine parts of France, Italy, and Switzerland.

Hardcore traditionalists insist that copper creates a unique flavor that just cannot be replicated with stainless steel equipment. It is believed that a chemical reaction which takes place between the copper and the milk helps some of the ripening bacteria and creates certain flavors. I have also heard that copper oxides are a yeast nutrient in beer making.

All copper should be cleaned, however. Excessive copper is definitely poisonous, but in trace quantities is an essential mineral.

I also thought I'd respond to the comment that "if its on sale it must be safe!"

Does anyone have anything to add to Nerro's comments? I thought copper immersion chillers were sold by homebrew shops . . . . such things would surely need to be safe in order be on sale?

I couldn't disagree more strongly. There are scores of things onsale, for internal ingestion, which are clearly unsafe. To name a few: Aluminum pans for cooking, Beer in tin cans, MSG in food products, methanol in soft-drinks, etc...

There are also somethings on sale which are "not suggested for internal ingestion" by the FDA, but which will probably end up getting used for that purpose anyways and are probably harmless if not outright healthy in small quantities. For example, Sassafras root, Comfrey Leaf, Yarrow leaf, Wormwood, etc...

Did you know that Sage has a higher Thujone concentration than Wormwood? (Thujone is the neurotoxin which has been demonized as the culprit for absinthe's intoxicating ability)
 
I never knew they made cheese in copper. Interesting....

I do have to take umbrage with your unsafe examples though. Aluminum pans are perfectly safe for cooking. If you're referring to the supposed link to Alzheimers that's been debunked many times. Tin cans are unsafe, that's why they use stainless steel and plastic lined aluminum cans nowadays. I haven't been able to find a neutral cite that talks about aspartame (additive in diet soft drinks) degrading into methanol, so I dunno about that.

Your point isn't lost on me though, there are many things that are unsafe yet sold as food safe(such as transfats, pesticides on produce, E. Coli scares) I happen to think those are poor examples.
 
For one thing household copper doesn't oxidise on the inside much and as far as it does it generally doesn't react because tap water is normally barely acidic whereas a wort cooler oxidises on the side that gets immersed and gets stripped of its oxidised copper every time you use it because wort ís acidic.
 
For one thing household copper doesn't oxidise on the inside much and as far as it does it generally doesn't react because tap water is normally barely acidic whereas a wort cooler oxidises on the side that gets immersed and gets stripped of its oxidised copper every time you use it because wort ís acidic.

Copper piping doesn't oxidize on the inside because the water keeps free oxygen out. When the wort cleans off the oxides on your chiller it leaves a nice clean surface for oxygen to attack, but if you use it on a regular basis, new oxidation will be minimal.
 

Yup.

Clean your chiller and you'll be fine. You really don't want the "dirt" from the chiller in your beer. It might provide off flavors and that would be about the worst thing you'll get from it.

The yeast will take up most of the copper oxide that gets in the wort and use that as yeast nutrient and take it out of solution and into the trub.

As to the previous "WORLD IS ENDING" comments, it's been found that one of the main causes of death is living. :D
 
I haven't bothered to look it up again, but I was surprised to hear a long time back that although Sassasrass(sp) has been used for a long time in teas and such, too much of it is supposed to be pretty bad for you, and I don't know how much is too much, but I remember thinking that I can't believe people made tea and drank it very often without getting sick.
 
Sassafras is a tree that people use the root of to make tea as mentioned. It has carcinogens in it, so I think people used it for a long time and some got cancer, some didn't. It is not extremely dangerous as far as I know, just not something good to have a cup of every day. It was used in root-beer as well.
 
Sassafras oil is actually a listed substance these days because it can be used to synthesize MDMA (AKA XTC).
 
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