A surgical nurse takes up homebrewing...

[rohanski]

I agree. I usually rinse my hands in the starsan solution when I pull out the funnel to transfer the wort to the carboy. And above all never touch the wort or anything that comes in contact with the wort.

 

[El_Borracho]

Wow. It took 26 posts for that to come out in the open. Here we go.

1. I am sure no one on this board does it, but I have an assignment for you guys and gals. When you have some free time out in public to people watch next, start your chronograph and see how long it takes to spot someone either picking their nose _or_ touching their face in the vicinity of their nose. How long to spot two or three or five?

The nose is a perfect environment to culture bacteria. Warm, moist, dark; bacteria love it. Now think about all those people harvesting from their personal bacteria farms every how every many minutes.

A really good habit, I think, for a home brewer is to wash your hands right at the end of the boil, dry your hands with a clean towel - and be very careful to wash your hands AGAIN if you so much as touch your face before the pitch.

Like I mentioned earlier, I've done other things that involved as much, if not more sterility. If I'm working in the kitchen and my hand grazed the sides of the counter tops - I got to wash - that's not a place I spray clorox and wipe. What if I scratched my leg over my shorts. Or a drop fell in my eye and I wiped it off. I have a healthy obsession with keeping my hands clean. People watching is what made me such a damn germ-o-phobe.

 

[rohanski]

El Borracho

All very good points. The most critical time is between cool down and transfer which I usually do within 10 minutes. That 10 minutes has been a killer for me. I want to try throwing on the lid after boil and cool in an ice bath thus lestening exposure time.

 

[the_wickster]

The nose is a perfect environment to culture bacteria. Warm, moist, dark; bacteria love it. Now think about all those people harvesting from their personal bacteria farms every how every many minutes.

Oh no. I don't think I'm ever going to leave my house again after reading that.

Good thing I have an immune system.

Oxyclean -> Rinse -> Starsan -> wort & pitch or rack & keg.
Good beer!

What is the difference between sanitized and sterilized?

 

[El_Borracho]

What is the difference between sanitized and sterilized?

http://www.bodensatz.com/staticpages/index.php?page=sanitation

"Sanitize vs. Sterilize
First of all, lets get our terminology straight -- you are not sterilizing anything. That it simply not an option for even a mega-brewery, let alone for a homebrewer. What you want to do is sanitize, or get rid of the vast majority of any harmful bacteria, but not all of it."

So this tells me (if he knows what he is talking about) its like a 99.9 sterile environment? Meaning it's not completely germ free.

I'm wondering if it's similar to pasteurization?

 

[BierMuncher]

I'm a bleach guy...

Not so exact with the measurements...a heafty splash of bleach and some hot tap water...as good shaking around...a good hot water rinse x 3 and off to the rack to drip dry.

Never had an issue.

 

[Poindexter]

What is the difference between sanitized and sterilized?

The other thing was your wort does not have an immune system, but I think you were joking about that...


A sterile object has no living anything on it. Not even bacterial spores.

In the OR we talk about levels of 'disinfection' rather than sanitation.

An item that has been subject to "high level disinfection" might (or might not) have some viable spores on it, but no living micro-organisms. Tuberculosis is a spore forming bacteria, so are the bacteria in genus Clostridium. Spores are sort of like eggs, in that they have a hard protective shell but will 'inflate' and come to 'life' in the presence of water at appropriate temperatures. Actually dry yeast are yeast spores, not living yeaset cells. Then there is mid-level disinfection, low level disinfection is like the combs in the barber shop...

I'll go read up on 'sanitation' to find out what brewers mean when they use the term.

Working from www.wiktionary.org , disinfection is a subset of sanitation. Works for me, with surgical sterility being the ultimate in disinfection.

So with sanitation (@wiki) = the policy and practice of protecting health (of the yeast for us) through hygenic measures...... we got to look up hygeine and we are back to cleaning every bottle with a scrub brush.

So phylogeny recapitulating ontology again, sanitizers can not disinfect what cleaners have not yet rendered hygenic.

Thanks for the straight line wickster, that was cute.

 

[Alamo_Beer]

I wonder if you could "fight" an infection, or in other words help prevent against one by pitching an insane amount of yeast...you know the whole "choke them out" kinda thing

 

[Fingers]

A yeast surge!

 

[eviljafar]

I once had a bad infection. Luckily it was only in my beer and didn't travel to any of my more sensitive areas.

I read someone somewhere suggesting to use glad/sarin wrap on the fermenter, held on with the large o-ring from the lid, in place of the lid. The idea was that you could see what was going on in the fermenter. A pinhole was poked in the plastic wrap to allow CO2 to escape. It all sounds good in theory and I did it many times without any problems. This was in Aus where a single width of sarin wrap would cover the top of the standard fermenter.

One time though I didn't notice I had spilled a little something on the back of the fermenter. A few days later I took a sample for an SG reading. Then I went away for a couple of weeks. When I got back I had an obvious problem. White/green mould on the wort. I took off the "lid" and had a smell. My god, it nearly knocked me over. It was like having knitting needles shoved up my nostrils and into the back of my eyes.

I think that some mould/fungus/wrath of god formed on the dribble of wort on the outside of the fermenter. When I took the sample I think some air travelled over this area and was sucked into the fermenter, bringing spores/spawn of the devil into my wort. Two weeks later and my punishment was meted out. That was like 15 years ago and I can still remember what it smells like.

Now when I want to take a sample I wipe the fermenter with a cloth soaked in sanitiser a few minutes in advance.

 

[Alamo_Beer]

A yeast surge!

Haha there we go!

Yeah, youe wouldn't have to aerate BC you'll be pitching an ass load of yeast...they don't need to grow any

I'm not saying you could pitch a bunch of yeast and ferement in an old shoe or something but if you were a bit slack on sanitation this could help....

 

[Bernie Brewer]

OK Poindexter you've got me. I never had an infection at all until I stopped using bleach as a sanitizer. Why did I stop? Because you must rinse bleach, and i am a lazy slob. I'm gonna have to start with the bleach again, though, I think.

BTW my SWMBO is also an OR nurse. Actually, she is the director of the OR. But she hates beer so she never comments on my sanitation practices.

 

[PsicloneRN]

The reason there are many male nurse brewers is because being a man in the nursing profession drives you to the bottle!

 

[Poindexter]

A yeast surge!

Well, I learned to bake bread with dried yeast from foil packets about 30 years ago. When I pitch my wort it looks like I am pouring in about half a gallon of skim milk. But that is a different thread, I am still reading up on yeast starter here.

 

[Poindexter]

It was pointed out in another thread that botulinum toxin, the bacteria waste that causes the condition of botulism will not be denatured - rendered harmless- by a 10% bleach solution until after 10 to 15 minutes of contact time.

There are rather a large number of different strains of bacteria within genus Clostridium species botulinum that produce botulinum toxin.

A presumably partial list is here:

http://pathema.tigr.org/tigr-scripts/Clostridium/shared/HtmlPage.cgi?page=bont_strains

Note the strains are divided by the serotype of the toxin produced.

I shall edit this post with another suitable reference when I have current correct information regarding ultimate disinfection under household conditions. Most of the chemicals we use in the hospital I would not want in my home even it was legal.

I shall poke around some more for:

A) time and temp in a dry oven to kill or render harmless anything and everything currently known to science (it used to be 350°F for 30 minutes)

B) exposure time with __% bleach solution to kill or render harmless...etc, used to be instantly with 10% bleach. We haven't had any fist fights in the break room yet today ;-)

EDIT: post one edited to reflect review status.

 

[kilroy]

As a Winemaker, I use Potassium Metabisulphate to sanitize everything.
Have it in a spray bottle, and I literally just spray everything (hands included) that touches my wines. Carboys and Buckets get a quart or so dumped in and then swished and swirled around a bunch.

Touch wood, I have never had a bad wine, Also made my GF some beer (granted it was a kit) but used K-Meta throughout that too - did not have any problems.

Kilroy

 

[rohanski]

Touch wood,

hey, hey, kids might be reading this.

 

[kornkob]

Remember we don't need sterile equipment. All we need is equipment clean enough for the yeast we pitch to win the race for the food.

THIS. SO MANY TIMES THIS.


I've tried preaching this but it seems like such an uphill battle. I suspect that it is anecdotal evidence coupled with the current western society trend toward 'anti bacterial' everything that makes it so hard to get people to understand that beer is a pretty hardy foodstuff.