Clean VS Sanitized

1 batch without means little.

Brew 4 without, and report back. I expect 3 of 4 will go south.

Even batches WITH sanitizer can go south because there are numerous pathways for microbes to enter after the wort has cooled below the threshold of death temperature.

Furthermore, even those regional beer brewers employ sanitation until a specific point in the process where they intentionally inoculate the wort.

 

Please provide solid examples of intolerance.

 

Yes - because every brewer that sanitizes their equipment is a hand-sanitizing-using germ freak.


We just don't like wasting our time and money, that's all. I would question your "in-tallerance" towards proven science when you start doubting the safety of common brewing sanitizers, saying it's the Overworld Powers of "them" that want you to use them. Then again, we must have all ingested enough sanitizer that we're now under "their" control.

 

There's a difference between overusing hand sanitizer and antibiotics etc in general and sanitizing your carboy or using anti bacterial after taking a dump before you go to work at Chipotle.

 

I almost never wash my hands, unless it's brew-day.

 

I 100% agree that hand sanitizer is overused and that certain chemicals such as triclosan and other "broad spectrum" antibiotics do pose dangers of producing MRSA and whatnot. However that is because in/on our bodies, a balanced spectrum of a wide variety of microorganisms is beneficial, and may play a part in immune response, allergies, and a host of other previously unknown areas. A monoculture of bacteria is a serious danger to our health, but a monoculture of yeast is the ONLY way to make good beer. So it's a sound principal for your own health, just not for making good beer.

 

I am particularly fond of washing after using restroom, but not drying, and then shaking someones hand.


Keeps them guessing.

 

It's not intolerance, it's shared knowledge and experience. I'll also vote for the sanitizer, even for brewing intentional sour beers. It doesn't guarantee a positive outcome, but it's a pretty effective insurance policy.

Skip the sanitizer if you want to though - your end product will still be beer, it's just more likely to not be the beer you intended.

 

You may be able to make many batches, not use a sanitizer of any kind, and still not have an infected batch. That method may work repeatedly, right up until it doesn't. Sanitizing, however you choose to do it, will yield repeatable results, and give you some peace of mind. So why not do it? Brewers have been concerned about eliminating potential pathogens in there beers long before the world had a bottle of hand sanitizer staring you in the face every where you look.

We don't make beer. Yeast make beer. All we do as Brewers is create the best possible environment for the yeast to do their thing without interference from any competing micro organisms. There is no reason not to do it, other than being a contrarian. Being a contrarian is not necessarily a bad thing, as many innovations have come from people who are driven to find better, perhaps even controversial ways of doing things. Best of luck to you.

 

I mostly agree, but ftfy anyway

See: sours

 

And, ironically, current studies support that "chemicals" are responsible for maintaining the necessary biodiversity of gut/intestinal flora that keeps other tribes/cultures remarkably disease free.

 

thanks! I was generalizing to make the point but I figured someone would point that out

 

That's not terribly ironic considering that everything you've we've ever touched is made of "chemicals", it's really more inevitable I would say

 

Not all germs are enemies. Just enough of them to make people ill because many fail to wash their hands when needed. Similarly, there's enough germs around to make your beer become ill as well. Sanitization is simple common sense.

 

The irony is in the idea that we lack said chemicals.

 

One more piece of advice for the non-sanitized beer: do some reading and calculating into how much yeast you should pitch into your beer and do not skimp on this part.

 

Handwrought, welcome to the community and the wonderful hobby of homebrewing. Your question is not absurd by any means, as homebrewing is all about experimentation. I myself love to brew both sour/funky and clean beers, and with both I use proper sanitizing practices. Why sanitize when funking or souring a beer? Because there are bacteria and wild yeast (i.e. acetobacter) that can overtake the intended souring bacteria (Lactobacillus or Pediococus) or funky yeasts (Brettanomyces) that make a sour or funky beer tasty. I myself have accidentally not sanitized some of my batches when I was starting, and the resulting beers became infected and undrinkable, wasting time and money. My wife and I tend to live a healthier lifestyle by minimizing processed meats (I mainly hunt for our meat or raise pigs and sheep), and also minimize our usage of chemicals. But, I don't bat an eye about using cleaning agents such as One Step or PBW and sanitizing solution such as Sani-Clean or Star-San. By all means, do a side by side comparison and let us all know the outcome. This is a strong community of like minded minds, some more argumentative than others, but we are a community. I hope you stick with this hobby as it's one of the most rewarding activities in my life. Best of luck to you, and don't forget to update us on the sanitized vs. unsanitized experiment.

 

You have to keep in mind that sanitizing brewing equipment has nothing to do with the effects of microbiological organisms on our health. There are no known pathogens that can survive in beer, which in turn cannot impact our health. Unlike sanitation requirements in the food industry, brewery sanitation S.O.P. are not there to reduce health risks. However, as crudely as the point has been made here, we sanitize our equipment so that we ensure the fermentation activity of the desired organism, basically eliminating (or coming close) the biological competition to our brewer's yeast that we pitch into our wort. This increases our chances at producing a better quality product with better consistency.

You don't have to sanitize your brewing equipment, but you will almost definitely like the resulting product better if you do. And, as others have pointed out, there are no health risks from sanitizing chemicals when used according to manufacturer's recommendations.

 

Seriously? Your attitude is going south over this? People responded to an assumption in your original question that there is not any evidence for, and displays a lack of understanding basic nuance of chemistry and biology, and rightly so. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence to suggest sanitizers made for brewing are perfectly safe to use.

If you really want to combat this "in-tallerant" crowd, go post something in the Brew Science or Debate forums. Provide lots of evidence. There will be plenty provided to counter your claim, I can assure you. If you'd rather not, I'd suggest being a bit more selective in where you toss about the accusations of intolerance.

 

Science! Good luck with your experiments; hopefully you end up with tasty beer.

The suggestion of using ethanol to sanitize your equipment is a good one. Some cheap "White Eagle" vodka or similar in a spray bottle should serve you without worry about using halogens, or caustic/acidic solutions.

 

Let's go ahead and reinvent the wheel, while we're at it.

 

You've been suckered in by big circumference I see.

 

So, we just threw phrasing out the window?

 

delete

 

Just to make it down the chem trail that much faster?

 

I've read the entire thread and the OP has taken some heat for his original question and some subsequent comments. But I think the original question is a valid one: any tips for avoiding the use of chemicals?
Many brewers just accept the way things have always been done; I remember when BIAB first came on the scene, many veteran brewers advised against it and I heard comments like: "learn to brew the RIGHT way".
So would it be possible to brew beer without using chemical sanitizer?
I'll go out on a limb and say yes, its possible, here's how I would do it:
NOTE: I'm a big fan of using star-san, so I'm not trying this myself.
-- Do regular cleaning on the mash tun and boil kettle.
--Using boiling water to clean fermenting bucket, lid and airlock. I'm not sure if the water even has to be boiling, milk, for example, needs to be heated to 161F for 15 seconds to be considered safe by modern standards. Could brewing equipment be sanitized with hot, but not boiling water?
--After Fermenting, heat treat all bottling utensils: siphon, bottling bucket, bottles, caps and bottle the beer.
--After bottle conditioning, do a "stove top" bottle pasteurization as described in a thread in this forum.
--Let cool, refrigerate, and drink.
So the problem is, you can go through all these steps and you might still have an infected beer. Also, your beer flavor might be altered by the stove-top pasteurization.
It would be interesting to try, but in my opinion, using star-san isn't any worse for your health than consuming alcohol.
The use of sanitizing chemicals provides the brewer with the ability to reduce the number of variables that could produce a bad beer, and thus lets the brewer focus his/her attention on changing the variables that affect beer flavor, aroma, mouth feel and overall enjoyment.
Good Luck, if you try brewing without sanitizer, please report back how your beer is coming out.

 

I made a smart a$$ comment earlier and I'm sorry for that, it was all in good fun and I ment no offense by it. Now having said that I will say it would be somewhat foolish not to use sanitizer just to avoid chemicals in brewing. I consider myself a person who lives pretty clean (minus my occasional over consumption of beer) and would rather have the almost non existent amount of sanitizer left in my beer than risk an infected batch. It's just not worth the money, time, or effort you will put forth to leave to chance. If you are worried about the chemical sanitizers use c2h6o.

 

It sounds like you are equating safe for consumption to sanitized for fermentation. The two are not necessarily the same, and are not done for the same purposes. Pasteurizing milk at 161F is done to kill harmful pathogens like bacteria and parasites, but is not necessarily "sanitized" to beer fermentation standards.

Anything below 190F will require several minutes of contact time, as a general rule of thumb.

 

I haven't "equated" anything. I did, however throw the idea of using hot water below boiling point for sanitation out there for others to comment on.
I provided the 161F for milk pasteurization as an example, nothing more.
I would agree with your general rule of thumb of 190F for several minutes as a good idea, but can not find any actual documentation to prove/disprove that practice.

 

I'd be willing to bet you could make consistently good beer by sanitizing with just boiling water. My concern with that method is, you could be risking releasing plasticizers from plastic fermenters, risking broken glass carboys, or burning yourself with all the boiling water you'd be using.
I use Starsan because I feel it's effective, affordable, safe, and easy to use.

There's a lot of ways to ruin a batch of beer, in 8 years I haven't done it yet, but it's because I have a good grasp on all the factors and take steps to eliminate , or minimize as many as I can.

 

I find that using food pasteurization as an example is misleading, since food standards are in place for different organisms and for different reasons. What's acceptable for food pasteurization is not necessarily acceptable for brewing sanitation. I don't mean offense; I'm just trying to make this clear for OP.

 

I'm not offended and I'd like to apologize for my snotty, nitpicking response to your use of the word "equate". But back to the sanitizing with chemicals vs/hot water discussion, why isn't the milk standard of 161F for 15 seconds acceptable? The milk standard was developed to eliminate illnesses caused by milk, which was a common occurrence before the 161F practice was widely adopted.
Are there different microbes that occur in brewing that can survive 161F for 15 seconds? What are they and exactly how and how long at what temperature do you have to go to get rid of them?
Is the "rule of thumb" of 190F found in any documentation or standards of brewing sanitation? I've been looking and can't find any.
I threw the "below boiling water" for sanitation question out there because I wasn't sure if plastic parts like airlocks and auto siphons can handle water that hot. I'm thinking they can, but just don't know for sure.
I do know that people have done no-boil "raw ale" where the wort only gets as hot as the batch sparge. I haven't done a no boil beer but would think the raw ale wort temperature would be in the 160-170 range? Is that hot enough for brewing sanitation?
Here's a link I found that says for dish washing, 171F for 30 seconds is required, I would suppose they have some rationale for that standard.

http://www.co.burlington.nj.us/DocumentCenter/Home/View/614

 

I just started brewing last year and have always used sanitizer for all post boil equipment. Wouldn't do it any other way. I also could not see dumping a batch of beer because I didn't use sanitizer.

I would not consider myself a germ freak but I wash my hands several times during the course of the day just to prevent the spread of germs.

Life as we know it today is full of germs and I for one will do what I can to reduce my chances of getting some sort of infection, on my body, in my beer, etc.

When asking a question on any forum, be prepared for many different responses and sometimes those responses will only confuse you even more. I have been there . For the most part forums are a helpful place to get answer but not helpful when you get 15 different answers. Granted there are more than one way to accomplish anything but it would be nice, especially for newbies to get consistent answers.

To the OP, there were some replies given ways you could sanitize without using StarSan. Give those a try and see what happens. For me, I don't like wasting money therefore I choose to use a sanitizer to an attempt to make beer that is not infected.

 

That's exactly the kind of experimental approach that a lot of the poster's here will applaud you for and take an interest in the outcome but I'd say your approach needs a bit more scientific rigour. Split your batches for a year and keep a careful log of the outcomes and your experiences. Any one of us could brew a one off that was un-sanitised and didn't get infected (or vice versa for that matter -although the odds are empirically proven to be longer on that outcome).

All the best with your brewing and I hope you enjoy the results!

 

ftfy

 

http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue1.2/raines.html

 

If you want to learn about pasteurization you should do a little research on canning and why it is done. My understanding is that we use different temperatures for different products. For instance, we don't want to cook pickles, and they are generally safe to eat raw and don't harbor bacteria, so we don't need a pressure canner at all, generally just heat the cans to fairly low temperatures to kill the bacteria. But if we want to can something like a meat or pasta sauce with meat in it, we need a pressure canner to raise the temperature high enough and for long enough to kill bacteria like botulism. This is why it is recommend that you absolutely DO NOT make wort and can it for starters and such UNLESS you use a pressure canner. You can get violently, extremely, badly ill from poor procedures. Now, with that said, people use the no-chill method all the time. Find a vessel that's safe for boiling temperatures and use the wort to sanitize it. Note that I used the word sanitize, not sterilize. If you want to sterilize it you'll need higher temperatures than boiling, and for longer. Even the wort itself is not sterile despite being boiling. But for our purposes it should be good enough. Also, you're going to need to make sure that carboy is spotlessly clean, because if there's residue and stuff hiding in it, all bets are off. Organic soil being on your equipment will harbor all sorts of bacteria that will be difficult to kill unless you remove the soil.

 

Handwrought...I think you're nuts, but hey, we all are in some way.

As others have mentioned, if I were to stop using chemical sanitizer, as others have said, I'd treat everything that touches my beer post-boil with heat. My dishwasher has a sanitize cycle, I might try that and crank my hot water heater up to max. Maybe boil everything if that doesn't work. What I would say, is that you CAN'T just clean everything. You need to do something in place of the chemicals.

I honestly don't think that it'd be that hard to brew good beer without using chemical sanitizers. Most just choose not to because it'd be a pain. We all have developed our own brewing processes based on the limitations of what we have. You'll just be more limited than most.

 

Yes, this has everything to do with pH and how you mean to store the item canned. Anything low pH (typically at or under 4.6 if memory serves) is suitable for water bath canning. Anything above that needs to be pressure cooked if you want it to be shelf stable.

Unfermented wort, which should be above pH 4.6, needs to be pressure cooked to be shelf stable, and for that reason.

 

Interesting......