Water. It Cleans Stuff.

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Zul'jin

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We did an experiment at work. Here's a brief run down.

We test for the growth of Fecal Coliforms in secondary treated waste water. This is water that has been mechanically screened to remove the biggest debris. Grit has been removed via mechanics and hydraulics. Solids have been settled out by hydraulics and gravity and grease has been skimmed off the top.

After that, we use microorganisms to digest the waste in waste water. The is made to occur in an aerated basin supplied with waste water, activated sludge and forced air. The bugs eat the poop.

Next, we send the water to a clarifier. There, solids settle out to the bottom and clear water flows over the top of each clarifier.

Here's where it starts to relate to what I'm talking about. This water has received no chemical sanitation. We know there are bacteria in this water. There are Fecal Coliforms here and we want to see how many. We take a sample of this water.

The lab tests the water by placing a few drops of it on several petri dishes. The dishes sit for 24 hours while the colonies grow. There are also dishes with no sample on them used as a control to prove the methods were correct. From the time we drop off the sample till the time the Fecal Coliforms colonies are counted, all of the equipment the water touches has been meticulously sanitized. We use heat to do this and then store the equipment in a sterile manner. Colonies always grow in the sample dishes. Always. Never on the control dishes.

Well, in a lab class, we did an experiment. We did not heat sanitize or store the equipment we used to do this same test. As a matter of fact, we reused the same equipment 15 times after it's first run. All we did was rinse it with clean water. All 16 sample dishes grew colonies. Totally expected.

Ah, but. None of the 15 control dishes, that were only rinsed with clean water after the first run, grew colonies. None. Not one control dish had so much as 1 colony. All of the equipment had been exposed, quite literally awash, in water known and test proven to contain Fecal Coliforms. Yet, no colonies grew on the control dishes.

We effectively cleaned equipment with no more than clean water. Clean enough to wash off all the known bacteria it was contaminated with. Also, mind you, this is in a lab at a waster water treatment plant being tested by waste water employees who had been out in the plant earlier that day. We were not sanitized.

The point? Your equipment is not so dirty. Water does a wonderful job of cleaning stuff. The world will not end if you don't soak every millimeter of your gear in sanitizer. Laying cleaned equipment on a clean counter top or paper towel will not guarantee an infection. Rinsing a sanitized or even clean piece of gear is OK. You don't have to decon the whole house. You can breathe and brew beer at the same time. The world is not so filthy as to stop you from opening a primary.

Now, I'm not saying the extra precautions we take with brewing are not worth it. They are. It's well documented that filthy habits may result in filthy beer. To ruin a batch of beer, a batch of work, time and money, by being a nasty ass would be a shame. I'm just saying, be clean, RDWHAHB. Beer infections do not have you marked for death.
 
Thank you so much for saying this. There are guys that will put on latex gloves, the OR booties, and hats, and masks, and STILL obsess about whether they are sanitary enough. That is obviously overkill. I have said for years- yes you need to be sanitary, but remember, great beer has been made for centuries before mankind had any clue about little buggies and sanitation.
 
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