DonLiguori
Well-Known Member
First, the question at hand: If you *accidentally* add StarSan sanitizer to your wort pre-boil, what will this do to the finished product?
To explain:
This is horribly embarrassing to even admit to as I've been homebrewing for years now, but I finally made a mistake that I just couldn't RDWHAHB to. I was draining off the wort from my mash tun into an Ale Pail (to roughly measure the volume) and transferring the wort from there into the brew kettle outside in the bitter cold. But after the first runnings, when I went to collect the first sparge, I grabbed the bucket I had brought up for sanitizing the post-boil equipment, which contained only the 1 oz. StarSan I had put in it. I realized after that it was the wrong bucket, mostly because there was a ridiculous amount of foam building up, and it was too high of a volume to just throw away without making the whole brew-day worthless. So I boiled it all and plowed ahead like nothing happened, all the while worrying that this batch was done for.
I know StarSan stops being an active sanitizer as pH gets more neutral, and since this was a fairly light blonde ale I'm hoping the pH got above the threshold to keep it from killing off pitched yeast. I was also hoping that the boil would provide enough energy to possibly break down the sanitizing chemical or cause it to react with the wort in such a way as to deactivate it's properties but not take a large crap on the flavor. I'm aware that StarSan becomes a yeast nutrient in the long run when it's just the foam in the bucket that gets left behind, I've just never heard of an entire ounce of it going into the fermenter.
Luckily, I pitched two packets of dry yeast in the first place (I keep meaning to finish the soldering on my stir-plate to do starters), so even if some of the yeast got offed the fermentation has seemed to be going okay. My only concern is the off-flavors that could be coming out of this, which would be detrimental to a lighter ale.
To explain:
This is horribly embarrassing to even admit to as I've been homebrewing for years now, but I finally made a mistake that I just couldn't RDWHAHB to. I was draining off the wort from my mash tun into an Ale Pail (to roughly measure the volume) and transferring the wort from there into the brew kettle outside in the bitter cold. But after the first runnings, when I went to collect the first sparge, I grabbed the bucket I had brought up for sanitizing the post-boil equipment, which contained only the 1 oz. StarSan I had put in it. I realized after that it was the wrong bucket, mostly because there was a ridiculous amount of foam building up, and it was too high of a volume to just throw away without making the whole brew-day worthless. So I boiled it all and plowed ahead like nothing happened, all the while worrying that this batch was done for.
I know StarSan stops being an active sanitizer as pH gets more neutral, and since this was a fairly light blonde ale I'm hoping the pH got above the threshold to keep it from killing off pitched yeast. I was also hoping that the boil would provide enough energy to possibly break down the sanitizing chemical or cause it to react with the wort in such a way as to deactivate it's properties but not take a large crap on the flavor. I'm aware that StarSan becomes a yeast nutrient in the long run when it's just the foam in the bucket that gets left behind, I've just never heard of an entire ounce of it going into the fermenter.
Luckily, I pitched two packets of dry yeast in the first place (I keep meaning to finish the soldering on my stir-plate to do starters), so even if some of the yeast got offed the fermentation has seemed to be going okay. My only concern is the off-flavors that could be coming out of this, which would be detrimental to a lighter ale.