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For all you sanitization freaks :d

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My this thread has twisted and turned.

shanek17 said:
I found this video awhile ago and found it interesting. its good to see things from another point of view. this video features bannana brewing in africa! i find it cool how relaxed they are with their procedures and their brewing beer which is generally lower alcohol, which means it would probably spoil before a high alcohol percent wine.
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BINGO!
You can easily brew with no sanitation, but you should probably plan on quaffing your final products early. These types of fermentations are often consumed while still fermenting. If you expect to brew things to age and mature with grace, your odds improve with good sanitation.



Kelvin said:
Make your stinky no dirty brews all day and drink them til your content. I'll stick with doing it right.
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There is not a "right" way. Just different ways that can help you achieve different ends though some approaches definitely work better than others.

Kelvin said:
Yeast package says to sanitize the package before opening using. I'm sure there is a reason for it. Just saying.
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While I am squarely in the "sanitation freak" camp, there is a such thing as overkill.

Msarro said:
However, some times the invaders outnumber the yeast, and when that happens you'll get vinegar.

Still other times you'll get invaders and they'll ultimately get overtaken by yeast, but not before byproducts of their eating sugar get put into the brew.

So, I'll stick with sanitation. This is one time I trust the science.
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Words of true wisdom from a relative newcomer!
Bless you for speaking clearly and rationally.

Wild yeast, lactic acid bacteria, acetic acid bacteria and other nasties are all around the environment and they can easily set up shop in equipment that has not been cleaned and sanitized well. Even though your active fermentation may dominate them, during the course of the fermentation, some of these buggers will have a large enough population to leave behind distinctive aroma and flavor products - they could add complexity, or could leave you with a batch of foul swill. You roll the dice and take what comes.

Yes, honey that has proper moisture content will not allow bad things to grow, and will keep indefinitely. Once diluted, it becomes easy food for spoilage organisms. Honey can also contain spores of osmophilic yeast (there's some posts on this in the Patron's section if you want to read more) that can start to ferment with a slight increase in the moisture content. So even pure honey can potentially contain problems.

I don't get obsessive about it, but since I prefer lower ABV meads, and enjoy melomels and lower-strength braggots, for MY NEEDS, good sanitation is important. I have lost beer batches in the past to wild yeast and have seen spoilage occur and I make an effort to put the odds in my favor with basic hygiene.

I won't criticize anyone who chooses to ignore sanitation, and their mead certainly won't become dangerous to drink because the pH and alcohol will prevent any human pathogens from surviving. However, I will not trouble my head to feel any sympathy for them when the inevitable loss of a batch occurs.

Good Meading!
Medsen
 
Chevette Girl said:

And my case of moldy honey? It was a honey bear squeezie-bottle from the same apiary I get all my honey from because I find a squeezie-bottle a lot easier to measure out for cooking and toast than dipping a spoon or knife into a honey jar. My usual honey source, Crerar's, filter without heating the honey, so the stuff crystalizes within a few months. I had already tried gently heating it multiple times but it just crystallized within a couple of days and of course wouldn't come out of the dang bottle, defeating the whole purpose of having it in said bottle. So I boiled some water in my kettle to decrease the chances of anything icky hitching a ride, allowed it to cool in the kettle, and poured a little bit into the jar with the honey in the hopes that tipping the water balance a little might make it slightly less oversaturated and less likely to recrystallize within a day or two. Lesson learned, the next time I wanted honey, the squeezy-bottle had green fuzz growing in it.
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I did this once too, it worked fine, until the honey fermented.
Still it was OK on toast!
No green bits.

Shortly after, I started meadhing. It soon became obvious to my analytical mind that diluting honey was a recipe for mead, or in your case: spoiled mead, and not one for liquid honey.
 
Medsen Fey said:
While I am squarely in the "sanitation freak" camp, there is a such thing as overkill.
Medsen
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And the reason for Wyeast saying to sanitize the outside of the package is because you are pouring it directly from it. Do you sanitize the container you are making your starter in? Because I know I do. It's the same difference. It's simply to insure nothing from the outside goes along with it. I still fail to see the harm in dipping your smack pack in your starsan bucket. Doesn't sound like overkill to me.
 
There's a beer brewer I saw on another site that tosses his dry yeast packs into his liquid sanitizer. That's overkill, imho.
 
Kelvin said:
And the reason for Wyeast saying to sanitize the outside of the package is because you are pouring it directly from it. Do you sanitize the container you are making your starter in? Because I know I do. It's the same difference. It's simply to insure nothing from the outside goes along with it. I still fail to see the harm in dipping your smack pack in your starsan bucket. Doesn't sound like overkill to me.
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I agree. Like I said, “Why take a chance? It isn't hard.”
And it isn't overkill. I fail to see how following a Manufactures Recommendations for optimum performance would be considered “Overkill”. I’d bet a dime to dry powder Wyeast knows a bit more that all of us amateurs….
 
Chevette Girl said:
"Ooookay, you can put on the brakes there... there's a whole other thread in the Hive about "fake honey" that's pretty recent, go look it up and read it before you sound the alarm bells again. It's just been ultrafiltered so you can't tell where it came from by identifying the pollen species, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's all "fake" honey."
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Iv heard that the problem is more than the honey being ultrafiltered, as you can read below this website states theres more to it than that. They mention adding corn syrup and also high heat to the commercial honey.

http://www.endtimesreport.com/storing_honey.html

It has been said that "honey is honey, as long as it has FDA approval, so you might as well buy it from a discount store." Nothing could be further from the truth. The Clinton Administration allowed the importation of Chinese "honey" as early as 1992, which sold for $0.25 per pound, wholesale. Studies in Canada found that Chinese "honey" was at least 40% corn syrup, contained carmel coloring, and Canada joined Europe in banning its importation.


Chevette Girl said:
"Well, to put our confusion in perspective, this is what you said earlier on in this thread:

"Originally Posted by shanek17
Theres no need to sanitize every little thing for brewing. Lets give the yeasties and alcohol some credit and let them show their strengths!"


Are you starting to see how we misconstrued your point?"
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I understand that I am sharing a perspective that does not see chemical sanitizing as the absolute, and I did start off the conversation embracing the natural integrity of the home brew but it doesnt mean I am completly against sanitization.

Yes I did say “theres no need to sanitize every little thing” , and notice how I DID NOT SAY “hey we don't need to sanitize anything ever! All I was saying is we dont need to go overboard and sanitize every little thing. I even clarified in my second post and said "I do agree a beer should be clean and you should practice good sanitary beer making but theres no need to be obsessive about cleaning every little thing."

So how does that equal into Soyala saying that I said "we do not need to be sanitary after all". that would imply that no sanitzation is needed, PERIOD! my examples clearly illustrate that I believe sanitzation plays its role in hombrewing. The initial video was simply an ice breaker to get the discussion rolling, it does not represent my sanitization beliefs 100% percent.
 
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shanek17 said:
What do you mean when you say, “see? We don’t have to be sanitary after all!” when did I say or imply that?
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Soyala_Amaya said:
You implied that by the very link you posted.
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I realize that me posting a video showing no chemical sanitization and listing the thread as “for all you sanitization freaks :D” may leave you with the impression that I do not believe in any sanitization. But that is not the case.

Just because I shared a video of other home brewers and their practice does not mean that this is how I homebrew and it doesnt mean that I practice their techniques 100% percent. Thats like saying, there is a School teacher that does a class lecture on world wide religions and they show the class a video regarding this. Therefore the teacher is implying that she wants to copy the practices and beliefs of said religions and that the children should too....I would instead see this as the teacher is simply expanding their awareness.

Soyala_Amaya said:
You then say
shankek17 said:
i find it cool how relaxed they are with their procedures QUOTE]

Thus implying that this is something that you want to emulate and think other people should too. Multiple people have given multiple reasons why no one on this board wants to emulate the practices of poverty stricken African tribes or ignorant medeival lords. (Such as**alcoholthe reason our ancestors drank**alcohol*WAS because it was safer to drink, but because they boiled it to get more sugars from the grain, not because of the**alcohol.)
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Yes i did find it cool how relaxed they are with their homebrewing, that does not imply I want to copy them, it simply showing interest. And therefore lead to me creating a discussion and I was using the video as an ice breaker to get the discussion rolling, No where In this form have I said “see? We don’t have to be sanitary after all!” In fact in my second post in this discussion i clarified and said “I do agree a beer should be clean and you should practice good sanitary beer making but theres no need to be obsessive about cleaning every little thing."
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Shanek, enough. There is NO WAY you can say that you CLEARLY anything when there is 4 pages of people trying to figure out what the hell you are trying to say. Instead of attacking people and quoting people into oblivion (yes, a bit hypocritical of me at this point, but I have recognized where things are going and am stopping now) how about just manning up and saying "Well crap, obviously I didn't say what I meant to say very well, can I have a do over?"

Again, this has been asked several times. Again, you seem to completely ignore it. ADMITTING A MISCOMMUNICATION OVER TYPE ON THE INTERNET WHERE THERE IS NO FACIAL OR BODY LANGUAGE TO READ DOES NOT MEAN YOU LOSE. We tend not to think in terms of win or lose here. We LIKE to see people grow and learn and see things mature, and we're pretty patient. (Heck, this is a hobby were the recommended time frame is 1-5 YEARS before pay off)

I'm not arguing any more points because at this point in whatever edition of Calvinball that has been going on here, obviously everyone has a different set of rulebooks. There has been a communication error from the beginning. Please reset and try again. Actually type more information and thought process into your post than your disclaimer this time? Make a whole new thread and lets let this one die.

Everyone here, people with 50 posts and people with 5,000, let this thread die because we are really too nice a community to play he said-she said over someone defending a less-well thought out initial post than could have been to the bitter end than admitting the fumble and trying again.

Please?
 
Okay fair enough, this conversation has gotten confusing, as you may know the topic of sanitization is a confusing one... but i feel i learnt somethin from all of this.

Anyways, I will have to make a new topic sometime when im feelin up to it.
 
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