Don't fear the foam, don't fear the foam, don't fear the foam...

ettbeer said:

phosphate is an ester of phosphoric acid and i believe you need some form of alcohol present to form them,

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Well, I know for sure that when baker's yeast is mass-produced, the way they provide the yeast with the phosphate it requires is by adding.... drum-roll, please.... phosphoric acid.

rycov said:

yeah, if your a woman then dipping your balls will have no effect.

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Dude, I dunno about you, but I always rub my balls with a 1oz-to-5gal dilution of Starsan before dipping them in my beer. To brew any other way is just GROSS.

ettbeer said:

so you're saying the water you're adding to the star san solution doesn't contain it either?? i'm confused.. so your add chlorimine and phsophoric acid..

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totally. i'm cool with stuff that doesn't hurt me in my beer. i was just saying that unless you have some way of distilling water and buying organic grains and hops and finding some natural hippy sanitizer, then your always gonna have some chemicals in your beer. if it helps more than hurts i say let it be

jsweet said:

Dude, I dunno about you, but I always rub my balls with a 1oz-to-5gal dilution of Starsan before dipping them in my beer. To brew any other way is just GROSS.

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i rub them with sanitizer, but i also rinse it off before i dip them in

rycov said:

i rub them with sanitizer, but i also rinse it off before i dip them in

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What are we talking about here? Rub, rinse it, dip it?

ettbeer said:

fair enough.. but dont' fear the rinse either!

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touche (i think thats how it's spelled)

jsweet said:

I was wondering about that... my wife is a little paranoid about me using this sanitizer when our kids are awake. I was thinking if I drank 4oz in front of her....

<--- he drank too much Starsan

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It is a very good sanitizer for other things as well. and the point of the product is that is mostly harmless to humans. my daughter at 22mo grabbed the spray bottle and sprayed her face with it. my mother-in-law freaked. at dilution it won't hurt and i had to calm everyone down. my daughter is fine and there are not problems with it. we even spray the high chair down with it.

Hockeyhunter99 said:

It is a very good sanitizer for other things as well. and the point of the product is that is mostly harmless to humans. my daughter at 22mo grabbed the spray bottle and sprayed her face with it. my mother-in-law freaked. at dilution it won't hurt and i had to calm everyone down. my daughter is fine and there are not problems with it. we even spray the high chair down with it.

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yeah. my kid drank some one day. "daddy this spray bottle tastes yucky!" "seriously? why would you drink out of a bottle you found in the garage? do i have to teach you everything?... never mind, thats my fault"

rycov said:

yeah. my kid drank some one day. "daddy this spray bottle tastes yucky!" "seriously? why would you drink out of a bottle you found in the garage? do i have to teach you everything?... never mind, thats my fault"

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How much did he drink and did he get a stomach-ache?

Seriously, if I can find somebody who's done it before with no ill effects, I'm gonna drink some in front of my wife so she doesn't worry about the kids being around it.

As far as drinking out of spray bottles you found in the garage... I can't leave ANYTHING toxic near floor level, no matter what room it's in. Our dogs are both sneaky and hungry...

If the seasons don't fear the reaper, why should you fear the foam?

Ever see the Blob? It started as floam.

coryforsenate said:

if the seasons don't fear the reaper, why should you fear the foam?

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+1

kapbrew13 said:

Ever see the Blob? It started as floam.

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+1 For making me nostalgia. Gotta watch the commercial.

rycov said:

...you could probably dip your balls in the beer...

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Here I thought *I* loved beer and then it's taken to a whole new level!

:cross:

Mals

Really? Dipping what?

jsweet said:

How much did he drink and did he get a stomach-ache?

Seriously, if I can find somebody who's done it before with no ill effects, I'm gonna drink some in front of my wife so she doesn't worry about the kids being around it.

As far as drinking out of spray bottles you found in the garage... I can't leave ANYTHING toxic near floor level, no matter what room it's in. Our dogs are both sneaky and hungry...

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she just squirted it a couple times and drank it. i'm sure its not great for you, but i would drink a shot glass of it or whatever. (note that i am a complete ass and just becasue i would doesnt mean you should). actually i have some in the garage. i'm gonna go take a sip and i'll report back on wether or not my stomach hurts or i die or anything. (also note i have been drinkin a lil' and you should still probably not do it)

I've read that Charlie Talley has drank 8 oz. of the stuff. Can't find the exact link, but here it looks like several others have too, and Revvy confirms my previous statement.

Would I drink it to prove a point? Heckimus no... but it just shows that you should never... ever... fear the foam.

coryforsenate said:

If the seasons don't fear the reaper, why should you fear the foam?

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+ another 1

k. just drank a mouthful. will post results in a few hours

rycov said:

k. just drank a mouthful. will post results in a few hours

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Can we get an ASTM rating and grade?

not sure what ASTM is (ass to mouth?). i will tell you that i feel clean deep on the inside, i think i've reached a level of cleanliness that i haven't attained in a long while.

rycov said:

not sure what ASTM is (ass to mouth?). i will tell you that i feel clean deep on the inside, i think i've reached a level of cleanliness that i haven't attained in a long while.

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Lol... Appearance, Smell, Taste, Mouthfeel... or with Starsan, possibly your description is more fitting.

A: clear, mostly like water, but with foam if i jostle it around
S: very slightly chemicly lemony (artificial lemony)
T: see S
M: rather thin
Serving style: i scooped it out of a five gallon bucket with a solo cup
little to no head retention. the fact that its good for my beer is its only redeeming quality.

i give it a B+

I came to a realization after being (not so nicely) corrected by a member of another forum about the actual mechanism by which StarSan sanitizes. It's not the low pH that burns/melts/destroys organisms, apparently. StarSan is classified not as an "acid sanitizer," but as an "acid-anionic" sanitizer. So I Google "acid-anionic sanitizer," and from what I can gather what these do is facilitate some kind of anionic attraction that sort of pulls proteins out of the cell walls via some kind of ionic/anionic molecular charge*. This reaction is facilitated somehow by the low pH of the environment (likely because pH itself, and acidity/alkalinity, is a function of the concentration of certain ions).

Someone said earlier in the thread that it's considered a "weak acid." Well, a pH of 3 is certainly an acid, but it's absolutely not a melt-your-skin-quickly kind of acid. Stomach acid (ever had reflux?) has a pH of 1 to 2, and even that takes a while to erode the esophagus in chronic sufferers. Is vinegar safe? Lemon juice? pH of 2, more acidic than even a strong StarSan solution [http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/education/site_students/phscale.html]

*It's hard to find public info, at least, about what goes on here, but this page: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fs077 describes a similar class of sanitizers (QACs) as such:
"Since QACs are positively charged cations, their mode of action is related to their attraction to negatively charged materials such as bacterial proteins." Followed directly by the description of acid-anionic sanitizers as:

"Like QACs, acid-anionic sanitizers are surface- active sanitizers. These formulations include an inorganic acid plus a surfactant, and are often used for the dual function of acid rinse and sanitization.

Whereas QACs are positively charged, these sanitizers are negatively charged. Their activity is moderately affected by water hardness. Their low use pH, detergency, stability, low odor potential, and non-corrosiveness makes them highly desirable in some applications."

So in terms of acids, StarSan is pretty safe -- it doesn't sanitize by corroding things to death, there's some molecular stuff going on that's specifically harmful to single-cell type organisms, that's only facilitated or enabled by the low pH.

EDIT: I'm talking about a properly-diluted solution. Obviously the concentrate itself is pretty corrosive. I don't know what the pH would be before dilution.

its cool dude, no fancy words needed. i got this experiment on lock!

Ok.

rycov said:

little to no head retention

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Really? Just shake it up a little bit, should give you some foam

haha. yeah i don't know. i'm drunk, i didn't have to work today so i've been drinking all day. i was just making **** up.

(about the ASTM thing, not about drinking it, i really did drink some)

troub said:

Someone said earlier in the thread that it's considered a "weak acid." Well, a pH of 3 is certainly an acid, but it's absolutely not a melt-your-skin-quickly kind of acid. Stomach acid (ever had reflux?) has a pH of 1 to 2, and even that takes a while to erode the esophagus in chronic sufferers. Is vinegar safe? Lemon juice? pH of 2, more acidic than even a strong StarSan solution [http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/education/site_students/phscale.html]

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That was me. By a weak acid, I mean it's tendency to ionize the solution. This has almost nothing to do with pH in a water + starsan ONLY solution. The point is that if there is NOTHING there to neutralize the acidity of the starsan, it's very effective at lowering the pH. But it requires VERY little of a base to neutralize it. Even other acids (i.e. wort) introduced into the solution (if you want to consider the 1oz of starsan left at the bottom of a fermenter that) will negate the effects of the phosphoric acid. Acids vs. bases don't work on a 1:1 ratio of pH and volume (i.e. 1oz of a 3pH acid doesn't necessarily neutralize 1oz of a 11pH base, though they are equally far away from a "neutral" pH of 7.) Read http://www.chemguide.co.uk/physical/acidbaseeqia/acids.html for a better explanation.

And to reply to ettbeer - some more valid reasons I don't give a crap about rinsing my starsan foam: 1) it annoys people who can't get over the fact that it's not necessary to rinse. 2) I'm lazy, rinsing takes time. 3) some people may have to pay a lot for their water, in which case it's just using more water.

I would love to subject you to a blind taste-test - get the lightest, subtlest flavored beer you can find (would be interesting to try this with say a Bud Select 55), put a single drop of starsan into a 12oz bottle and taste it side by side with an "untainted" bottle. Let us know if you can taste the difference correctly more than half the time.

I have heard on Brew Strong that too much residual foam, especially in the bottles can hurt the head retention of your beer

on the acid test, it should be around pH3. litmus (sp.) paper shows about 3-4 ph. but will not burn like an acid

I wouldn't drink it straight from the bottle it burned a white spot in my concrete garage floor that I can't remove. That being said I drank some on accident once. My air lock filled up with beer because of a vigorous fermentation, it was my first brew and I wanted to taste the beer so I just drank what was in the air lock. I forgot I had filled the airlock with a concentrated solution of water/star san. It was really sour and after I realized what I did I freaked out a little but it didn't hurt me much. I stttttttutter everyyy once in a wwwhhhile but other than than I'm pretty normal I think.

jsweet said:

How much did he drink and did he get a stomach-ache?

Seriously, if I can find somebody who's done it before with no ill effects, I'm gonna drink some in front of my wife so she doesn't worry about the kids being around it.

As far as drinking out of spray bottles you found in the garage... I can't leave ANYTHING toxic near floor level, no matter what room it's in. Our dogs are both sneaky and hungry...

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ettbeer said:

they don't say "definitely don't rinse".. that's just a straight up lie right there.

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They may not say that on the bottle, but the head dude at five star has indeed said in interviews that you shouldn't rinse. Not just that you don't need to, that you shouldn't.

And to reply to ettbeer - some more valid reasons I don't give a crap about rinsing my starsan foam: 1) it annoys people who can't get over the fact that it's not necessary to rinse. 2) I'm lazy, rinsing takes time. 3) some people may have to pay a lot for their water, in which case it's just using more water.


+1 on number 2 i was waiting to say it

I started with soap and bleach to clean and sanitize, on my first ten or so batches. Serious pain, and as previously said how do i know if the water i'm rinsing with is 100percent contaminant free? But i never had any problems, but got the star san, 100 times easier and i'm lazy too so the less work the better,
+1 on the spray bottle too.

rycov said:

k. just drank a mouthful. will post results in a few hours

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just a follow up on this. don't drink it! it turned me into a newt!

rycov said:

just a follow up on this. don't drink it! it turned me into a newt!

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a newt?!?

well i got better

rycov said:

well i got better

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ok. and i thought monty python was a lost art. excellent work my friends

well, we did do the nose...

...And the hat, but she is a witch!

Not only do I use Starsan for my brewing, I keep a spray bottle in the kitchen for a multitude of other uses. SWMBO is a bit of a germaphobe so she likes to spray down the counter and clean baby toys/equipment with it. As an amateur aquarist I use it to clean fish tank siphons and quarantine tanks between uses. (I do not reuse that stuff but I will reuse brewing sanitizer.) Also good for spraying down cutting boards after cleanup from cutting meat. It does a good job of getting the slime off of pet dishes.