Do I really need to boil my whole starter?

Do I really need to boil my whole starter? I have a hot water dispenser that gives me 180 degree water that I could dissolve enough DME for the starter and then add that to enough tap water for the starter and then I wouldn’t have to wait so long for it to cool to pitching temperature. Surely 180 degrees is hot enough to kill anything growing in the DME.
What do you think?

I wouldn't chance it. It's pretty important to make sure no organisms are in the wort (in this case, starter- but still wort) except the yeast you pitch. Remember, wort is basically perfect yeast food, and that makes it perfect food for other stuff as well. You'd probably be okay with the 180 degree water since the yeast would probably just out-compete any nasties that might be in there, but it's not really worth the risk when boiling is such an easy step, and cooling such a small amount of liquid doesn't really take that long.

Don't tell any one, but I use tap water for my starters. No boiling. I have yet to have an issue (knock on wood) I figure the yeast takes off so strong that nothing else has a chance. When the alcohol and CO2 go up and the oxygen goes down not much grows well. Taking risks like this could lead to infection, or a beer that doesn't age well. If you do boil you risk contaminating during the cool down period. When that sugar water is at about 100 degrees it is ripe for infection. Make sure it is sealed or well covered the whole time.

160 for 15 to 30 seconds is called flash pasturing and kills everything. Most bacteria can't survive at even 130 for any length of time.

The temperature is probably OK. The part that concerns me is using tapwater. We had another thread where somebody was apparently getting phenols from chlorine or chloramine in their starter.

The threshold for phenols is pretty much zero. Don’t overlook that part of your process.

Personally I wouldn’t screw around. Boil it, put a lid on it and cool it. Not difficult at all.

if it stays above 150 Fahrenheit with the added DME for ~30 min its basically pasteurizing it, which is fairly safe.

Getting cold tap water for the starter may not have immediate effects, but if your reusing the yeast the other critters in that slurry will pop up and make issues in fewer generations than if you were to boil it.

Thanks for the feedback.
What I'm concluding is that it will "probably" be ok but why chance it.
I have three (at least) paths I could take from here.
One is to continue to boil the wort in a pot and transfer it to the jug after it cools.
Another is to try the hot water despenser idea.
The best would be to buy myself a pyrex flask so I don't have to transfer the wort after it is boiled. The only problem with this solution is that it cost money.

WoodlandBrew said:

Don't tell any one, but I use tap water for my starters. No boiling. I have yet to have an issue (knock on wood) I figure the yeast takes off so strong that nothing else has a chance. When the alcohol and CO2 go up and the oxygen goes down not much grows well. Taking risks like this could lead to infection, or a beer that doesn't age well. If you do boil you risk contaminating during the cool down period. When that sugar water is at about 100 degrees it is ripe for infection. Make sure it is sealed or well covered the whole time.

160 for 15 to 30 seconds is called flash pasturing and kills everything. Most bacteria can't survive at even 130 for any length of time.

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Woodland brew, need to check your facts. 160 for 15 seconds will not kill much at all and 130 is a very agreeable temp for bacteria!

Boiling is your best bet to make sure you start clean. Just remember, sh** in, sh** out.

WoodlandBrew said:

160 for 15 to 30 seconds is called flash pasturing and kills everything. Most bacteria can't survive at even 130 for any length of time.

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You can't kill everything (called sterilization) without using either tyndellisation, or a preasure cooker. Basically some bacteria can go into a spore form that survives the heat/sanatizing effects. Bacteria can then come out of this dormant state and infect the beer. However there might only be a few left and they would be overrun by the yeast (not killed, just insufficent to present a problem). Remember bacteria are more temp resistant than yeast, and reproduce faster, so as a result you have to have serveral orders of magnitude population advantage in the yeast for them to be the dominate factor through out a ferment.

A follow up after reading wiki on pasturization and 'flash pasturizatoin'. It mentions getting a 99.999% reduction in the bacteria count. Which might be accomplished in your starter. My concern is that in the case of most pasturized things, you then put them in enviroments where it is difficult, if not nearly impossible for bacteria to get going again (ie refridgerator with milk), with starter you put it at an optimal temp of about 70F precisely so things will grow.

Anyhow, the question comes down to how was the LME/DME prepared (probably in a pretty bacteria free process because it has to be boiled down) and then stored (again pretty bacteria free) and finally you make the starter. At no time has it been sitting around being deliberatly soaked in bacteria - although no matter how hard we try, generally there is are a lot of the buggers around. It would be interesting if you could soak it and then do a bacteria count.

Agreed. Saying "everything" was overstateing the facts.

Here is the info on flash pasturising: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_pasteurization

And on why you set your water heater to 130 degrees:
http://www.ehow.com/facts_7182857_hot-water-heater-temperature-bacteria.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2094925/

Not real sure about the 130 stance. Food for example has to hit an internal temp to be void of live bacteria. 140 is the "critical temp" at where they can still survive. Bacteria can stand some extremes and heat is one of them. You expose them and they just spit out heat shock proteins to let them endure the pain, and then they bounce back. If you use tap water, still contains bacteria. Best way is autoclaving at 121C for 15 min at 15psi.

Besides sanitation I feel I need to boil my starters for the 10 minutes just to break up the clumps of dme.

I don't see the reward in not boiling a starter given the risk of infection from not doing it.

I always thought boiling also caramelized some sugars. Am I wrong?

It does, but no worries when making a starter.

Boiling starter wort takes 10-15 minutes tops. Cooling it in the sink takes about the same time, maximum. Is saving 30 minutes (if that) really worth the risk of taking nasty hot water straight from the heater ? That's your call.

I personally wouldn't do it: boiling insures that even if the spoon I used to stir the DME in wasn't completly sanitized, the bacteria and yeast which were on it were killed by the boil.

The water is coming out at 180F, but it's only at that temp briefly. It cools quickly when you add room temperature DME, and losses to ambient. To maintain it high enough for my comfort level, it'd take an external heat source, so in my opinion, you might as well boil it. But that's just this guys opinion. We introduce small amounts of contamination throughout the process no matter what we do, and we can only minimize it to the extent possible.