Brew Tips #2: Sanitation
Honestly, for a lot of people, this is probably the scariest topic if you've never brewed before. If follow every piece of advice on sanitation then even a pre-hopped kit which needs no boiling can have the number of steps and time spent on "brew" day triples. And fermenters of all beverages are fairly unanimous on this one. But, I think a lot of people lose sight of who is reading the blogs and forums.
Before I start, I want to add; by no means am I advocating to cut corners, ignore advice permanently or any such thing. If you're serious about brewing you'll look back on this article and laugh at me. Until you realize you may not have ever started/continued brewing without advice like this. As with all things brewing related, if you stick with it, you'll get more serious about some things, or if you stick with it and become obsessed with it, get serious about everything. Treat any tip advising you not to follow well established guidelines set out by others as a newbie tip only.
Wort, or the unfermented beer you start with, is like a bacterial paradise. You have a good ratio of food (sugars) and water and a temperature which yeast and bacteria like. Really, the only thing against bacteria would be the lack of air. But, there are plenty of anaerobic bacteria like yeast out there. Get too much in your beer and you'll get off flavors or worse, a ruined batch.
On the flipside, beer (unlike wort) isn't a particularly hospitable environment. If fermentation ended naturally, there was a good reason for it. Either the sugars are all gone (no more food makes bacteria sad) or the alcohol content is high enough to kill off the yeast (and likely most other things). And, even if they don't die off, most bacteria will basically do what yeast does at this point and do their equivalent of hibernation while they wait for more hospitable circumstances.
Take those 2 things together and you kind of get the gist of things. No one wants to ruin a batch of beer. Especially not a 5 gallon or larger one. But, at the same point, a cheap pack of dry yeast comes with enough viable yeast cells to ferment 5 gallons of "normal" strength beer in a week or so. So, if you're just making your first batch, your biggest concern should simply be winding up with something drinkable. More than likely you'll make other mistakes anyway and it would be impossible in the future to figure out whether future improvements were sanitation related or related to something else you screwed up :).
Focusing on getting the best beer ever out of your first few attempts is totally unreasonable. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do what you can, but it also means don't sweat the small stuff, what you really need to worry about is minimizing the bacteria that gets into your beer so that by the end of that week or so of fermentation the yeast were the clear winners by a wide margin.
To put it another way, my philosophy with cleaning boils down to focusing on the things which either spend a lot of time in contact with the beer or wort, or things which touch a lot of it. So, onto it:
- After using something, clean it (not sanitize). By clean I mean, get all visible crap off of it. A lot of stuff left behind when brewing can be a giant pain the butt to clean off later. Also, if you're not using it right away, there is no reason to sanitize... it is just going to pick up and grow bacteria while in storage. Bacteria is everywhere. Save you sanitizer and your patience. By the way... I don't think this suggestion even goes against what most forums and blogs will tell you. Pretty much all say to sanitize before use and most don't even mention what to do when you're done.
- Whenever I sanitize my fermentation vessels I sanitize all of my small or annoying things as well. For instance, cleaning a hose properly is a pain in the butt. If I've already prepped several gallons of sanitizer to clean my primary fermenter it costs me almost no additional time to drop my hoses in there and rinse them out afterwards. Same with things like airlocks. Hoses are probably the things I worry about the most outside of the primary fermenter. While your beer may not spend much time in contact with them, they touch an awfully large volume of it while racking or bottling. But same applies to other equipment, if it fits in the fermenter, why not put it in? If you're using a sanitizer meant for the brewing industry things either just need to shaken off or lightly rinsed afterwards. If you're using bleach or something else, you may want to reconsider since the point of this is just to piggy back on sanitizing the fermenter to get other things cleaned for less time and effort than it would be to do them individually later.
- Sanitize fermenters the day of use. This is probably the only point I strongly recommend even for a first endeavor. Your primary fermenter hits both of the 2 big concerns for bacteria; it has a large surface area and your beer will be in contact with it for effectively the entire time it is at its most vulnerable.
- If not sanitizing something, rinse before use. Even if rinsing won't sanitize a piece of equipment, it should still dilute any potential bacteria and at least reduce the odds of it hurting your brew.
- Don't bother with anything you'll boil. If you're boiling, the process will be anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half, with the temps at or above pasteurization temperatures the entire time, if not at a full on boil. In other words those things are sanitized by the heat. I'd argue you run more of a risk of accidentally imparting off flavors from your sanitizer (still really low odds if you follow instructions) than from getting any noticeable amount of bad bacteria.
- Bottles, most people I read just throw them in the bottom rack of the dishwasher on the hottest setting and let the steam sanitize them. Not sure how effective this is as a sanitization process. But, bottles have one advantage no other piece of equipment does; they only ever come in contact with beer and not wort. While it isn't immune to spoilage at this point, it is much less hospitable to future bacteria growth. A fact which likely contributes to why people don't recommend this as a sanitary practice for other equipment like the primary fermenter :)
And that is about the extent of my "process", which you can see if probably more of a guideline than actual process. What a lot of people don't understand is that sanitation isn't about being 100% devoid of bacteria. No sanitizer works that well, and even if you could get it there, the second it leaves the sanitizer solution, bacteria can still (and almost assuredly does) get back onto your equipment from the air and other surfaces, including you. No piece of equipment is ever fully sterile in a normal environment. Sanitation is just the ultimate end game in reducing the size and number of bacterial cultures your beer might encounter.
With this in mind, if you forego all else, even simply rinsing in hot water before use is still astronomically better than making no attempt to sanitize all. And, in all honesty, if that is all that you did, but you did it with all of your equipment, you would probably end up with drinkable beer more times than not. But where a typical home brewer will likely never see a spoiled batch, if this is all you did, you might see it happen. (Honestly, not sure I've ever read of a single case). If that is too lax for you to risk (and it should be), go the dishwasher route (clean in advance and throw in without cleaner and let steam sanitize).
Over time, clean equipment just becomes another "ingredient" in your beer. It does affect flavor at the end after all. And if you read enough blogs you'll get the feeling that this is how people feel and why they ram it down your throat. To them its like asking "why not use expired hops?". If you have the time/money/patience for those cleaning regimes up front, these early batches will serve to show you how sanitation affects the final product.
Final word. If you're OK with the risks and like the way that the beer turns out, you're not "wrong" to stick with less stringent sanitation practices. After all you're making the beer for you and not for "them".
Before I start, I want to add; by no means am I advocating to cut corners, ignore advice permanently or any such thing. If you're serious about brewing you'll look back on this article and laugh at me. Until you realize you may not have ever started/continued brewing without advice like this. As with all things brewing related, if you stick with it, you'll get more serious about some things, or if you stick with it and become obsessed with it, get serious about everything. Treat any tip advising you not to follow well established guidelines set out by others as a newbie tip only.
Wort, or the unfermented beer you start with, is like a bacterial paradise. You have a good ratio of food (sugars) and water and a temperature which yeast and bacteria like. Really, the only thing against bacteria would be the lack of air. But, there are plenty of anaerobic bacteria like yeast out there. Get too much in your beer and you'll get off flavors or worse, a ruined batch.
On the flipside, beer (unlike wort) isn't a particularly hospitable environment. If fermentation ended naturally, there was a good reason for it. Either the sugars are all gone (no more food makes bacteria sad) or the alcohol content is high enough to kill off the yeast (and likely most other things). And, even if they don't die off, most bacteria will basically do what yeast does at this point and do their equivalent of hibernation while they wait for more hospitable circumstances.
Take those 2 things together and you kind of get the gist of things. No one wants to ruin a batch of beer. Especially not a 5 gallon or larger one. But, at the same point, a cheap pack of dry yeast comes with enough viable yeast cells to ferment 5 gallons of "normal" strength beer in a week or so. So, if you're just making your first batch, your biggest concern should simply be winding up with something drinkable. More than likely you'll make other mistakes anyway and it would be impossible in the future to figure out whether future improvements were sanitation related or related to something else you screwed up :).
Focusing on getting the best beer ever out of your first few attempts is totally unreasonable. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do what you can, but it also means don't sweat the small stuff, what you really need to worry about is minimizing the bacteria that gets into your beer so that by the end of that week or so of fermentation the yeast were the clear winners by a wide margin.
To put it another way, my philosophy with cleaning boils down to focusing on the things which either spend a lot of time in contact with the beer or wort, or things which touch a lot of it. So, onto it:
- After using something, clean it (not sanitize). By clean I mean, get all visible crap off of it. A lot of stuff left behind when brewing can be a giant pain the butt to clean off later. Also, if you're not using it right away, there is no reason to sanitize... it is just going to pick up and grow bacteria while in storage. Bacteria is everywhere. Save you sanitizer and your patience. By the way... I don't think this suggestion even goes against what most forums and blogs will tell you. Pretty much all say to sanitize before use and most don't even mention what to do when you're done.
- Whenever I sanitize my fermentation vessels I sanitize all of my small or annoying things as well. For instance, cleaning a hose properly is a pain in the butt. If I've already prepped several gallons of sanitizer to clean my primary fermenter it costs me almost no additional time to drop my hoses in there and rinse them out afterwards. Same with things like airlocks. Hoses are probably the things I worry about the most outside of the primary fermenter. While your beer may not spend much time in contact with them, they touch an awfully large volume of it while racking or bottling. But same applies to other equipment, if it fits in the fermenter, why not put it in? If you're using a sanitizer meant for the brewing industry things either just need to shaken off or lightly rinsed afterwards. If you're using bleach or something else, you may want to reconsider since the point of this is just to piggy back on sanitizing the fermenter to get other things cleaned for less time and effort than it would be to do them individually later.
- Sanitize fermenters the day of use. This is probably the only point I strongly recommend even for a first endeavor. Your primary fermenter hits both of the 2 big concerns for bacteria; it has a large surface area and your beer will be in contact with it for effectively the entire time it is at its most vulnerable.
- If not sanitizing something, rinse before use. Even if rinsing won't sanitize a piece of equipment, it should still dilute any potential bacteria and at least reduce the odds of it hurting your brew.
- Don't bother with anything you'll boil. If you're boiling, the process will be anywhere from a half hour to an hour and a half, with the temps at or above pasteurization temperatures the entire time, if not at a full on boil. In other words those things are sanitized by the heat. I'd argue you run more of a risk of accidentally imparting off flavors from your sanitizer (still really low odds if you follow instructions) than from getting any noticeable amount of bad bacteria.
- Bottles, most people I read just throw them in the bottom rack of the dishwasher on the hottest setting and let the steam sanitize them. Not sure how effective this is as a sanitization process. But, bottles have one advantage no other piece of equipment does; they only ever come in contact with beer and not wort. While it isn't immune to spoilage at this point, it is much less hospitable to future bacteria growth. A fact which likely contributes to why people don't recommend this as a sanitary practice for other equipment like the primary fermenter :)
And that is about the extent of my "process", which you can see if probably more of a guideline than actual process. What a lot of people don't understand is that sanitation isn't about being 100% devoid of bacteria. No sanitizer works that well, and even if you could get it there, the second it leaves the sanitizer solution, bacteria can still (and almost assuredly does) get back onto your equipment from the air and other surfaces, including you. No piece of equipment is ever fully sterile in a normal environment. Sanitation is just the ultimate end game in reducing the size and number of bacterial cultures your beer might encounter.
With this in mind, if you forego all else, even simply rinsing in hot water before use is still astronomically better than making no attempt to sanitize all. And, in all honesty, if that is all that you did, but you did it with all of your equipment, you would probably end up with drinkable beer more times than not. But where a typical home brewer will likely never see a spoiled batch, if this is all you did, you might see it happen. (Honestly, not sure I've ever read of a single case). If that is too lax for you to risk (and it should be), go the dishwasher route (clean in advance and throw in without cleaner and let steam sanitize).
Over time, clean equipment just becomes another "ingredient" in your beer. It does affect flavor at the end after all. And if you read enough blogs you'll get the feeling that this is how people feel and why they ram it down your throat. To them its like asking "why not use expired hops?". If you have the time/money/patience for those cleaning regimes up front, these early batches will serve to show you how sanitation affects the final product.
Final word. If you're OK with the risks and like the way that the beer turns out, you're not "wrong" to stick with less stringent sanitation practices. After all you're making the beer for you and not for "them".
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