Fermentation is already occurring. Less than a 12 hour lag. Not bad.
My bad habits include: using municipal tap water without boiling to top up a boiled wort, rinsing bottles with hot tap water prior to bottling (no other sanitizer), rinsing a dishwasher-washed spoon with hot tap water and using it to fish out some yeast cake for a starter, using the same buckets/siphons to brew sour beers and regular beers.
I’m of the opinion that when you clean a surface completely, theres no food for a bacterium/yeast to use to stay alive. Therefore I thoroughly clean bottles/buckets/carboys right after use, and then rinse them before the next use to remove any dry particles that floated in.
Thats along the lines of my comfort level. I’m not advocating it for anyone else, but I do periodically tell people just so they its not a slam dunk that you’ll get an infection if you don’t use conventional wisdom in sanitation. You’re simply going from a relatively low probability event, to an even lower one.
The one other observation I’d make is that the key to avoiding a serious infection is to have vigorous yeast and plenty of them. Theres always competition with wild bugs if you aren’t working in a sterile environment, so having an army of yeast to outcompete the occasional wild critter is key. It always happens, and is why the yeast manufacturers recommend getting fresh yeast after four or five generations. I think I even read that in White’s Yeast book.
Although I suspect that their need to sell fresh yeast to stay in business may have something to do with that.
I’m not quite as lax as you are. Have a bucket of Iodophor standing around on brew day and everything gets rinsed. Maybe not the full two minutes. For little stuff I have a spray bottle of StarSan. But, I definitely don’t get carried away. SFSG.
Ok, cool. Obviously there is a good sized space to operate in concerning sanitation and good outcomes. I would advise beginning homebrewers to err on the side of meticulous sanitation, then reevaluate as they learn how to RDWHAHB. If we all did this great hobby the same way, it wouldn’t be as fun! Brew it up… 8)
+1
I always thought that this was to do with yeast mutating in an environment rather than infection.
It’s a bit of both, but for the pros lager yeasts are recommended to be repitched fewer times than ale yeasts due to genetic drift.
I have been drinking more largers for a while now - perhaps that would explain why I’ve been feeling a bit adrift lately…
And I thought THAT was because of the adjuncts they use which makes the yeasties lazy and just go after the easy sugars…If you use the “real” grains they have no choice… or so I was told.
That might infer some form of yeast intelligence we’re not aware of. I believe they simply produce enzymes that start splitting whatever carbohydrate chains are available and make use of whatever is produced that good for them. This may be the same thing you just said in a different form.
This is science as Tubercle understands it, which is at the very basic level.
I think if you’ve ever had a bad batch, you get more stringent about sanitation. Over time, some of that strictness wears off. But both sides are right. It is unlikely that you might have an infection from a short exposure to a relatively clean surface…but unlikely isn’t good enough for most (at least brewers)…
unlikely to get her pregnant.
unlikely to catch anything eating food from a restroom floor.
unlikely to get caught.
Or, just do the right thing and know you can “Relax, Not Worry, and have a clean uninfected Homebrew”.
Yeast intelligence… uh careful, tubercle my friend. there is a conspiracy that’s clear once you see it. hiding in plain sight can be very effective. this is a conspiracy far more widespread than anything contemplated by the illuminati, the masons, the far right whack jobs, the far left loonies… none of them come close. And it’s been going on for untold generations… yes, I speak of the yeast and their not-so-subtle farming of us ‘intelligent’ humans. think of it, by producing alcohol, they’ve trained us to provide them with all the necessaries of life. we feed them, take care of them, and their children, their children’s children’s children, and so it continues.
Don’t talk about yeast intelligence, we don’t want to upset the overlords. the yeast giveth, and the yeast taketh away.
I HATE you!!!
I’m having enough trouble sleeping with this time change which is the gov’ts way of disrupting our circadian rhythm to prepare us for the NEW WORLD ORDER, and now this!!!
I am a slave to the yeast!!!
BTY…I am a Mason including several higher degrees. And no, we don’t want to take over the world. We could have done that a long time ago if we wanted to. Who wants it? 
creepy.
I often find my self compelled to brew regularly, and even find myself brewing with no recollection of how I started. Usually I’ll have this realization- as if awakening from a dream, with a empty yeast vial/pack in my hand…
I’ve heard this before and I think it’s BS. Yes, if you grow it exclusively with glucose then there is no selective pressure to maintain the maltase genes. But neither is there selective pressure to get rid of those genes, so the individual cells don’t lose them instantly and their is not massive and simultaneous loss of the ability to ferment maltose in the population. They might stop making the enzymes, but that is not the same as losing the ability to make them. Oh, and even your healthy population of DME grown yeast will go after the easy sugar first, the glucose.
I grow stuff on glucose all of the time. I grow it in glucose before adding glycerol and freezing at -80C. I pull it from there and streak it to a 2% glucose plate. I pick a colony and grow it in 3 mls of 5-10% glucose YPD, then 12-15 mls of the same, then 50-100 mls of the same. From there it goes into DME, and any cells that may have lost the ability to use maltose will not thrive.
I would make sure to use something with maltose as the last step before pitching the yeast so that the cells have plenty of enzymes for fermentation. But even if you don’t, once the cells detect the maltose in the solution they will get to work on making sure they can use it. There may be a bit of lag while they build up the concentration of maltase enzymes, this might be the laziness that people mean.
I finally got a chance to look in Yeast to see what White says about successive pitches and contamination. He says that with each subsequent pitch the bacterial and wild yeast counts increase. Typically a brewery counters this by pitching a higher cell count so the fermentation proceeeds more rapidly. The viability of successive generations is also reduced compared the the lab culture, another reason to pitch higher counts.
I think that is a fair representation of what I thought I remembered from ym first time through the book.
Great book by the way.
Beano to the rescue!!!