The FDA has extremely stringent requirements on food-grade sanitation products, safety included.
Well, see I don't really trust the FDA's opinion for a variety of reasons.
i.e. While they allow Genetically Modified, toxic, carcinogenic and just generally unhealthy stuff into our food supply, they also ban wholesome healthy foods like raw milk, raw almonds, and require the irradiation of otherwise healthy food in the name of "food saftey."
In fact, Saniclean, which is basically a non-foaming starsan, doesn't even qualify as a food-grade sanitation solution, but is essentially the same stuff as starsan. As has been said before multiple times, people have drank diluted starsan without issue, me included.
People have consumed pharmicuticals, GMO's, MSG, and transfats without issue, me included. That doesn't mean that I think they are safe, even though the FDA does.
The amount I consumed was far, far higher than the residue that finds it's way into beer. Let's break it down. One ounce of starsan to 5 gallons of water, or 1 ounce to 640 ounces of water. That makes it .2% solution. I *might* have a total of what, 2 ounces of solution, including foam (and I'm being overly generous here) that makes it's way into the beer, which is, once I'm done with the calculator, .003 of an ounce of pure starsan in your *entire* 5 gallon batch of beer. If you're bottling into 12 ounce bottles, thats... 6 times 10^-5 ounces of starsan concentrate in each bottle. That works out to what, .000006 ounces or so. We're talking trace amounts here, and we're not even considering that once inert, starsan is eaten up by yeast anyway. However this is "scientific dogma" so you may want to discount everything I've just said. You probably consume more toxins though by an order of magnitude with a hamburger from McDonalds.
That is exactly one of the reasons that I never eat at McDonalds.
If you're really *that* paranoid, just rinse out the containers, though this defeats the concept of no-rinse sanitation. You'll have to anyway if you want to use bleach. If you're paranoid about using bleach, you'll probably have to stop drinking your local water supply anyway, so you've got bigger problems on your hands.
I'm not paranoid. I'm more a skeptic. Simply because 99% of the homebrewing community accepts these santizers doesn't mean that they're right.
I know that there is chlorine in my local water supply because I can taste it in the tap water, and which is why I use a water filter. Its more an issue that I just don't like the taste of unfiltered tap water. Its nasty.
I really am looking for more understanding of exactly what StarSans is, besides just the scientific names of the compounds that it contains. (I'm not a chemist.) How is it actually yeast food, because this just strikes me as propoganda? In other words, if I add a few drops of starsans to a stuck fermentation, will it help it along?
At this point, you have a few options. Use bleach. Use a sanitizer you feel "okay" using (though this is doubtful, they're all similar). Autoclave heat is an option. Or you could do what everyone else used to do for centuries, and just except frequent, ruined beer as a part of life.
Again, I don't think that frequent ruined beer was a part of life in the old days, or else beer brewing simply would not have been a practical or desirable way of making alcohol, in comparison to mead, cider, or wine. I think they learned techniques to deal with the problems and resources they had. i.e. old-time sanition techniques discussed earlier in the thread, and adding honey to the wort because of its inherint anti-septic qualities and the increased final stregnth of the brew. Wormword is also a powerful anti-septic herb. (It derives its name from its ability to expel worms from your digestive tract)
I have been using heat (boiling water) to sanitize my equipment for the last few brews, and haven't had any infections. Before that I was using one-step, and had some problems. Of course the problem with heat sanitizing is that its rather laborious and takes quite a bit of time and fuel, which I'd rather not waste if at all possible.
I'm also curious about oxyclean. What does it contain and how does it work? How should it be used for brewing? Where does one go about obtaining Oxyclean? Would it simply be found at a local grocery store or hardware store?
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