boiling priming sugar...

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Mismost

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instructions say boil for 10 minutes...no big deal, but I want to why. It dissolves almost instantly. What does the longer boil time accomplish?

Thanks
 
The longer boiling time ensures that it is completely dissolves, and gives time at a sufficiently high temperature to kill any microorganisms that could contaminate your beer.
 
I boil the water for 3 to 5 minutes to sanitize the kettle. Take the kettle off the heat and stir in the priming sugar and recover the kettle. I'll use a water bath to cool the solution if I need it quickly. Sugar is a natural preservative so it is very unlikely to harbor anything that will harm the beer.

I spray the outside of the kettle with Star San before pouring into the bottling bucket.
 
I boil for only a couple of minutes. Then I add it to the wort that is being siphoned in a swirl by having the hose sit along the side of the bucket. It is a very small amount of hot that gets mixed into a large amount of cool. I have not had any issue adding it hot..

I also don't worry about the outside of the kettle. It got hot enough to kill anything bad.
 
The instructions are safe, but overkill. I boil for less than a minute- sugar is pretty sanitary anyway (no microbes grow in it alone without water), and the water is sanitary as well, so it isn't important to me to boil for longer. It can't hurt, but isn't strictly necessary.
 
I use table sugar right out of the canister in the kitchen, so I get the water boiling, add the sugar (after waiting for the bottom of the saucepan to cool a little), and boil 10 minutes. I feel like it's safe to use my kitchen supply of sugar if I boil it.
 
Pasteurization happens in seconds at the boiling point. After all the microbes are dead, the extra boiling does......what?
 
Some good points here. Part of why I boil longer could be my background as well. After enough years in commercial kitchens, and having to hold product at certain temps for specified times for sanitation reasons, it's natural for me to do it. Old habits are hard to break. And I do it while I am washing bottles, so no real extra time involved.
 
Pasteurization happens in seconds at the boiling point. After all the microbes are dead, the extra boiling does......what?

I'm piecing various sources of information together and possibly going overboard, but from what I can find, pasteurization is a 5 log kill, and Star San gives you a 7 log kill with a 30 second contact. So if I can improve on basic pasteurization by doing something as simple as boiling for 10 minutes, I do it. It's probably overkill, but I feel better for doing it.
 
Pasteurization happens in seconds @ 160F. No need to boil the snot out of everything. Sugar is dry, leaving out one of three things nasty's need to live & multiply. Namely, moisture. I boil 2C of water to add my weighed amount of priming sugar too. The water gets boiled for a couple minutes, stir in the sugar till the water clears again, cover & cool a bit while I get the other stuff sanitized for bottling day to commence. Works perfectly fine with no extra boiling or time involved.:mug:
 
Realized I forgot this step when bottling over the weekend. I just weighed out the sugar and tossed it into the beer, then stirred it up. Hopefully things will turn out OK!
 

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