Aseptic technique

[Queequeg]

I hear a lot of talk about santizing equipment online but not too much about aseptic technique.

Are any folks here family with such pratices and if so what measure do you take during your brewing?

Looking at many youtube views, I often see really bad pratices, that no amount of sanitization will correct.

 

[JimRausch]

One recommendation- don't watch those vids.
I'm in the medical field, so yes I know a bit about asepsis. Couple things to think about:
1. Don't worry about anything before and during the boil. The boil will sterilize everything except for maybe anthrax spores. (So don't add dead cows to your mash).
2. During your cooling process, keep the lid on, and if you put anything in the wort, spray it 1st with starsan (or iodofor).
3. Make sure your fermenter is clean. Then make sure you sanitize it well. After you pour your wort into it, Everything that touches it gets the sanitizer treatment. Don't forget your hands- starsan or use hand sanitizer.
4. Once everything is in the bucket, LEAVE it alone. Every time you open the bucket to take a peak you increase the potential contamination possibilities. Don't even think about taking a SG sample for a full week minimum.
5. Remember that beer, as it's fermenting is a great environment to grow yeast, but a piss-poor environment for nasties.
6. Your bottling equipment(or kegging equipment) is a place that some people forget about. There are plenty of nooks and crannies that can hide bacteria, so make sure you first clean, then sanitize. Even go so far as to take things apart and scrub with a toothbrush and sanitizer.

If you follow posts around here for a while, you'll see that even the best will occasionally get a contamination problem. Maybe they were lax in technique, maybe they forgot to check the hiding places, or maybe it was an act of the beer gods. RDWHAHB and do better next time.

 

[Brewing_on_the_Internet]

So don't add dead cows to your mash).

avoid adding a handful of soil also. Bacillus Anthracis is normally found in soil.

 

[Queequeg]

I worked in pharma for many years and the many thing I picked up from it was. The biggest source of contamination is actually the personnel.

So I wear gloves (because a gloved hand is easier to sanitize than an unlgoved), a face mask, a hair net and my old lab coat.

The other thing I do that others might not is I put a clean plastic cover on my kitchen table and sanitize it with saniclean. This because my clean surface if I want to put anything down.

I am also highly suspicious about aerating the wort, especially by pouring the wort from a height. I would personally rather aerate once its in the fermentor by using a spoon through a narrow opening.

 

[orangehero]

You will never have and don't need aseptic technique unless you are culturing yeast in a lab.

Are you noticing problems with off-flavors with your old, more lax techniques?

It's pretty difficult to completely mess a beer up with full-blown infection. Contamination is on a gradient, and as long as your sanitization technique is reasonably careful you won't notice any effects unless you repitch the yeast many times.

Your precautions for making beer are definitely too much. The best approach to ensuring a good and consistent flavor profile is not donning the full body suit, but to pitch a proper amount of healthy, active yeast. Your diligence in that regard with bring far more benefit.

 

[Queequeg]

Your probably right, but I am a geek.

You won't have an aspetic environment, but you can still practice aspetic manipulations. Its suprising how clean you can keep things just by manipulations alone.

I have perform bioburden filterations and sterility tests (not live runs) on the bench before (no cleaner than my kitchen) with no gloves in fact, and because I used aseptic manipulation, I have zero recovery. Thats pretty clean result from a room in which we actually used to cultivate bacteria and fungi.

That said pitching the yeast properly is vitual, as you are effectively trying to get a monoculture.

The other thing that I would say is keep cardboard well away from you homebrew equipment. Cardboard has persistantly show to have a high population of bacillus spores. Bacillus spp will grow in very nutirent rich environments and are commonly resistant to distinfectant.

 

[DocScott]

I think you're going overboard. Being neat and clean and sanitizing surfaces that touch your wort (after the boil) is important. Gloves, mask, sanitizing table, lab coats are not, IMO. Aseptic technique is not needed in brewing. Many of the breweries I've been to are in warehouses and old factories... Certainly not the cleanest places. If its important to you though, I say go for it!

 

[pondlumber]

My house is about as clean as a barn. It was build in the 1850's and I have a dog and a cat walking around everything I do. I've never had an infection in the fermenter. I take precautions, like covering open containers with foil and not breathing into my carboy, but people have been home brewing for a long time. Using an air lock is really a new practice.

 

[pjj2ba]

Pay attention to what is OVER you equipment. Microbes generally fall down, not sideways, so do what you can to protect from above. Need to open a bucket? Hold the lid horizontal over it. Opening a tube/bottle of something? Hold it as horizontal as possible to minimize the size of the opening (as viewed from above) - or keep the lid over it. Don't set lids down if you can. Keep the over what you just opened.

Basically view anything you want to keep "sterile" as a target for things falling from above. Do whatever you can to minimize the size of the target or make it as hard as possible to hit that target. Minimize the time the target is exposed.

That, plus pay attention to how you grab things. Assume your hand are dirty, no matter how clean they are. Don't touch anywhere you think will come into contact with anything you want to keep clean,

 

[kh54s10]

Boy, there are a lot of hypochondriacs! Just keep things clean and sanitize with Starsan of Iodaphor and try not to worry so much. I am not fanatically clean, have done 43 batches in a little over 2 years and no hint of infection.

 

[Queequeg]

Pay attention to what is OVER you equipment. Microbes generally fall down, not sideways, so do what you can to protect from above. Need to open a bucket? Hold the lid horizontal over it. Opening a tube/bottle of something? Hold it as horizontal as possible to minimize the size of the opening (as viewed from above) - or keep the lid over it. Don't set lids down if you can. Keep the over what you just opened.

Basically view anything you want to keep "sterile" as a target for things falling from above. Do whatever you can to minimize the size of the target or make it as hard as possible to hit that target. Minimize the time the target is exposed.

That, plus pay attention to how you grab things. Assume your hand are dirty, no matter how clean they are. Don't touch anywhere you think will come into contact with anything you want to keep clean,

This is good advice and is actually a type of aspetic manipulation. This is the kind of comments I was looking for.

 

[biggmatt]

although I use.sanitizer for equipment while I am brewing, I use bleach to clean before hand. Its cheaper and more effective. After I wipe all my counters with bleach, I spay the air with it and wait 20 minutes.

 

[TrainSafe]

although I use.sanitizer for equipment while I am brewing, I use bleach to clean before hand. Its cheaper and more effective. After I wipe all my counters with bleach, I spay the air with it and wait 20 minutes.

I'm curios about your methods for sanitizing the air. Bleach requires a certain contact time to be effective as a sanitizer. When spraying the air, how do you guarantee that the air stays in contact with the bleach for one minute?

 

[boscobeans]

I do all after the boil brewing in the kitchen.

The chiller gets sanitized in the boil.
All the fermenting and testing stuff gets a cleaning.(fermenter, lid, spoon ,hydrometer, thermometer, airlock......)
Clean and sanitized fermenter lid goes on a sanitized counter top interior side up.
All the rest of the cleaned and sanitized stuff sits on the sanitized lid.

Cooled wort goes in the sanitized fermenter. (tested with sanitized thermometer)
Specific gravity is taken with the sanitized hydrometer.
Mix, aerate, stir in yeast or whatever with sanitized spoon.
Grab the sanitized airlock put on the lid, insert the airlock and fill with sanitizer or vodka.
Clean up your stuff and wait a month.

bosco

 

[Queequeg]

although I use.sanitizer for equipment while I am brewing, I use bleach to clean before hand. Its cheaper and more effective. After I wipe all my counters with bleach, I spay the air with it and wait 20 minutes.

I think even for me that is over vealous. You could invest in a VHP generator if you don't mind sealing you kithen up and having everything bleached white including your lungs. Lol

 

[kh54s10]

I think you OCD types need to set up a CLEAN ROOM! The entrance would be through a shower, then you change into a Hazmat suit. Don the helmet supplying filtered air and exhausted outside. All equipment that is used is sent to a lab to be sterilized and packaged for later use then the packages are sterilized before entering the room. After brewing the hazmat suit is incinerated and the entire room is sterilized for the next brewday!

Really, most of what I have read in this thread is overkill. Just be clean and as sanitary as you can without going nutz about it!

Sorry for the rant!

 

[DrunkleJon]

Sorry, but I gotta resurrect this TSA video.



If you want to be retentitively clean about things you can do the whole aseptic clealiness of your workspace. With the pitch rates from your yeast starters the yeast will elbow pretty much any other contaminants out of a properly clean and at least half-assed sanitized fermenter. True by being slightly lax you are increasing the risk a bit, but generally speaking the acidic alcoholic environment of a fermented beer is hostile enough that once it is fermented you are usually safe against most contaminants (and there arent enough sugars for wild yeasts to take hold).

 

[Queequeg]

"I can see all the dust" lol

Seriously though the dude is an amature, no hair net!:fro:

 

[boydster]

Sheesh. Some of you guys might think I brew in a biohazard level 4 environment if you were with me on brew day. I clean with PBW, sanitize with Star San, and don't put on a lab coat or latex gloves (or a hair net, for that matter). Guess I'm lucky I've only caught one really persistent saccharomyces infection.

 

[pjj2ba]

I will admit my brew area is pretty messy/dirty - but I know where the dirt/mess is and only put dirty/messy things down there. What needs to be clean is cleaned, what is sanitized is kept so it stays that way. This is partly dictated by lack of space. I just pay attention to what is what, and what touches it and where. I do not sanitize any surface except those that come into actual contact with wort, and then only boiled wort. That being said, I do have segregated equipment, including two pumps. One set sees raw grains/wort, and the other only sees boiled wort - only this later stuff is sanitized.

My only action that might seem anal to some is I wear elbow length gauntlets when handling raw grain. I started to do this after it took me a while to get rid of some sour bugs after some experimental brews. One day I noticed the amount of grain dust stuck to my arm hairs after mashing in. It was quite a bit! I could picture it later falling into my cooled wort (the dust is loaded with lactobacillus). I wash my hands while brewing but hadn't paid attention to my arms. Now I just wear the gloves