Starting the siphon with your mouth, Dangerous?

[chelero]

yeah it's a mexican homebrew store, so it's a little sparse, but I'll ask if he can get them, otherwise I'll get one the next time i go up to the states.

 

[Beau815]

My hands were full one time and i was lazy and what i did was put my mouth inside my shirt and the tube on the outside and inhaled a tiny bit and voila! I dont know if this is a good idea but def use it instead of getting your bacterial saliva on the hose.

 

[Rooster_P]

I don't know if it is any less dangerous, but i have a smaller piece of tubing that fits in the end of my siphon tube that I put my mouth on. As the beer get close to the the smaller tube, I pull the siphoning tube off the smaller one and drop the siphon tube into the bucket. I have had no problems doing this.

 

[chelero]

OK, here's a question,for those who may or may not have had this happen, IF the beer were to have been infected from this mistake/mishap, what could happen? how BAD might it taste? or is it going to affect the longevity/shelf life of the beer?

 

[BausFight]

OK, here's a question,for those who may or may not have had this happen, IF the beer were to have been infected from this mistake/mishap, what could happen? how BAD might it taste? or is it going to affect the longevity/shelf life of the beer?

From what it sounds like in this thread, it seems no one is 100% sure if it even contaminates the beer, just common sense speculation (which makes TOTAL sense given bacteria is bacteria). A few claims of soured beer but that doesn't mean it was from the siphoning.

I came across this thread because I did this with my first two batches and no problems, but this last batch I just did I was a little careless and it splashed my mouth and fell in the bucket. :\ We'll see in a few weeks.

 

[cvbjmk]

Siphoning with your mouth is a bad idea...I tried it with one of my first batches and ended up with a very plasticy off-flavor....It runs a very high risk of contaminating your beer and also oxidizing it, which are two things you don't want.

 

[Pkrd]

The worst that could happen is that you start siphoning 5 gallons and .. oops, sucked a bit much, hey, this is pretty good.....



Next thing you know you wake up with a headache SEVEN YEARS LATER.