Contamination via Stir-Bar?

[Pelikan]

I'm tooling around with my stir bar/stir plate, and notice that the stir bar has some roughness around the seams. Nothing dramatic, but perhaps enough to catch contaminates? Kinda like a scratch in the side of ones bucket, only on the face of the stir bar?

It is Teflon, though. Would soaking it in star san or beach solution for an extended time allay any concerns?

 

[Orfy]

This page seems to indicate bleach is okay.

Cleaning Teflon

 

[LooyvilleLarry]

I use an Erlanger flask and do a double stage sanitation. First, it sits in a coffee cup of StarSan with the cork and a spoon. Next, it gets added to the dme at flameout of the starter.

Kinda doubt any nasties can survive that.

 

[Bokonon]

I do a pretty good cleaning before and after each use. Everyone has it covered here but I wanted to throw out not to use PBW (not sure about oxyclean) on a stir bar or anything teflon coated since it will remove the teflon. I suspect a short soak won't harm it, but why tempt fate.

 

[drew91]

I boil mine with my starter "wort" right in the Erlenmeyer flask. The chances of anything surviving that are pretty minimal. That way there's no reason to worry about any little scratches or grooves as a source of contamination.

They're designed to be autoclave-safe, so the heat from boiling is a non-issue.

 

[Bokonon]

I boil mine with my starter "wort" right in the Erlenmeyer flask. The chances of anything surviving that are pretty minimal. That way there's no reason to worry about any little scratches or grooves as a source of contamination.

They're designed to be autoclave-safe, so the heat from boiling is a non-issue.

I used to boil right in my flask but now that I've switched to canning starter wort I just clean and sanitize really good. I think now I'm going to loosely wrap each stir bar in foil (I have 2 currently) and pressure cook them when I'm doing something else.