mixing spoon

[Hose]

Getting ready to make a go at my first brew, an Oatmeal Stout. Do you see a problem with using a older kitchen spoon for stirring if it's cleaned well?
Thanks

 

[IrregularPulse]

As long as it clean. What material?

 

[RM-MN]

Stirring when? For stirring in the extract (if you are doing an extract kit) the spoon won't matter much as you will be boiling the mix for an hour and no bacteria will survive that. Any clean spoon would be fine.

When your wort cools and you want to stir to aerate before pitching the yeast, you need a sanitized spoon.

 

[Hose]

The spoon is wooden. Thanks for the info.

 

[kgraber]

From what I've read you don't want to use wood. It is hard to get all of the bacteria out and get really clean.

 

[weirdboy]

Wait...you mean stirring in extract before you boil, right?

It doesn't matter what you use. You could use a dirty stick that you picked up off the ground. You're going to boil that stuff for an hour and kill anything that could have come off your stirring stick anyway.


For aeration purposes instead of stirring with a potentially bacteria-laden spoon, dump the wort back and forth between your brew pot and your sanitized fermenter. This will aerate the wort and keep it in contact with known sanitized equipment the whole time. In my experience spoons aren't very useful for aeration anyway. I use a silicone whisk for that purpose.