Questions and opinions on sanitation

So I hear everywhere that sanitation is (one of) the most important things in making sure your brew comes out good. But then I hear little tid bits of info that make me wonder how far we really have to go to prevent contamination and infection, and which steps to be really concerned at. Personally, I hate sanitizing and trying to keep every piece of equipment and tubing, not to mention hands, clean throughout the brew process. So opinions on the following points that I've heard (or thought up myself) would be appreciated.

1. You don't need to worry about sanitation of any equipment prior to boiling. So for us AG guys, that means as long as your mash/lauter tun are clean, they don't need to be sanitized. Any buggers here get killed in the boil.

2. You don't really need to insanely sanitize fermenting equipment if you're sure your yeast will outperform any other buggers that get in there, even if, say, you start your siphon with your mouth. So if you have a really healthy starter going, or especially if you're transfering onto trub that just finished some fermentation, you've got no worries.

3. Once fermentation is complete, you don't need to worry too much about contamination or infection since you've got a decent alcohol content and very little fermentable sugars left for anything to eat. So you don't need to over sanitize secondary fermentors, bottling buckets, bottles, or kegs.

Sounds a little extreme, I know, but does it make sense? And if anyone has experienced cases that contradict the above, I'd like to hear about them. Fire away, guys...

I'm going to disagree with #2, I think. Yes, the yeast may eventually outperform and squash lesser microbes, but if even a small infection gets started and ultimately squashed it could result in off flavors in the final product due to the byproducts left behind.

I'm also pretty careful after fermentation. I've had one batch go horribly awry that tasted good in the fermenter, but was undrinkable after bottling. I never tracked it down, but apparently had a very basic sanitation problem somewhere on bottling day.

As I see it, mixing up some sanitizer and making sure everything is clean and sanitized feels like a chore, but in the grand scheme of things is relatively minor in impact compared to the amount of time I invest in a 5g batch, and major in impact if allowed to ruin a batch.

:cross: My main concern is that I don't get any little buggers . Sanitation I agree sometimes seems a little extreme to do but when you think about your finished product it really is'nt that bad. I would rather spend extra time with sanitation to be sure that my batch of beer is ok. But that is just how I have done it since I started. Knock on wood no buggers yet.

The real trick is finding the easiest, fastest method of sanitizing. That just takes time and experience. I get a little better every time.

I'm into StarSan these days. It's cheap, reusable, and fast. One drawback - it eats the crap out of your hands.

But if it is going to be boiled, don't worry about it.

I also don't worry about anything to be boiled. I sanitize everything else, although I think the odds are fairly low that anything bad will happen. Sanitizing is like an insurance policy; probably 99 times out of 100 you don't need it, but that 1 time you ruin a brew, you'll wish you had done it.

Preboil : Just make sure it's clean, ie no visible "junk" growing in your mash tun

Postboil : As sanitary as you can stand. All depends on how comfortable you are with potentially having a batch go bad.

As one of the men with a book said.

We're going for sanitized not sterilized.

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We're not performing surgery.