Maybe your’re converting normal yeast phenols to chlorophenols with bleach. Do you prefer the taste of bandaids to spice?
Tangent - I’ve always wondered why there aren’t more options available for brewing sanitizers. In particular, there are no quaternary ammonium sanitizers marketed to brewers that I am aware of. There are plenty of them used in the medical and food service fields.
Quats are not a great no rinse beer sanitizer. I have no personal experience but you can Google it for more info.
I would like to know as well. My wife used quats for years in her lab. I am definitely on the hunt for a better no-rinse sanitizer. I used iodophor in between using bleach and Star San. Iodophor works great, but I could not deal with the staining.
After using iodine tablets for water treatment on extended backpacking treks earlier in life, I just don’t like to use iodophor - but it is probably just in my head, since it is so dilute when used in homebrewing applications.
No Band-Aid here!
Star San does not kill wild yeast or mold. In fact, it’s not uncommon to find mold in a container of Star San solution.
I stand corrected. I don’t see bacteria becoming resistant at the Homebrew level.
I believe your statement is incorrect otherwise Starsan would not be classified as sanitizer.
Mold occurs in the container that stores sanitizer for extended period of time above the sanitizer level.
This would hold a true in bucket full of bleach or iodophor above the solution level. One more thing is that we are talking about deluded liquid.
There is never mold in concentrated Starsan.
Good luck.
According to the creator of StarSan on BBR from March '07, StarSan does kill bacteria, yeasts, mold, and other spores. He states it is a combination of the two active ingredients that get the job done. Neither on their own can do it, but together they are the Beatles.
He also discusses the proper use of bleach, and has a procedure that is quite different from the one S Cerev is proposing.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr03-29-07.mp3 - Go to 29m:24s
Good to know.
If you’re concerned about Iodophor flavor carrying over into your beer, it’s a non-issue if used at the proper concentration.
Star San is a bactericide, which by definition is a sanitizer. What is being debated here is is a Star San an anti-microbial. My thesis is that it is not.
The main active ingredient in Star San is phosphoric acid, which is the same chemical used in acid washing. The other active ingredient is dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid, which is a surfactant that is commonly used in laundry detergent. The job of dodecylbenzene sulfonic acid is to lower the surface tension between the solution and what is being sanitized. Star San contains no oxidizing agents, which means that it kills the same way that acid washing kills; namely, by lowering the pH to the point where most bacteria give up the ghost.
From White Labs’s website (Yeast and Fermentation | White Labs):
"Acid Washing Yeast
Problem: Bacteria in the pitching yeast. Acid washing can help to reduce the number of some bacteria, but is not a complete solution. We usually do not recommend acid washing because:
*Acid washing only reduces the number of bacteria, but does not completely remove them. After one or two more generations, the bacteria can regenerate up to numbers that impact flavor.
*Acid washing has different impacts on different yeast strains, and usually reduces the quality of their performance and viability. Acid washing is not an effective way to kill wild yeast."
On the other hand, chlorine (Bleach) and iodine (iodophor) are broad spectrum oxidizing halogens the wreak havoc on cells by denaturing proteins.
If you still do not believe me that Star San does not kill wild yeast and mold, then check out Five Star’s IO Star.
“Formulated to use as a sanitizing spray on walls and equipment. It will reduce odors and is effective against e-coli and s s typhose as well as most mold and yeast.”
What’s the active ingredient in IO Star? It’s the oxidizing halogen iodine.
http://www.fivestarchemicals.com/wp-content/uploads/IOStarMSDS3.pdf
See my post above. I will believe they guy that has been in the industry for years and created the stuff.
He’s making a claim that is not supported by science. Star San belongs to a class of sanitizers known as “acid anionic sanitizers.” Members of this class of sanitizers have limited anti-microbial properties. They are in no way as effective as oxidizing halogens when it comes to broad spectrum anti-microbial properties.
From “Principles of Food Sanitation” (Principles of Food Sanitation - Norman Marriott, Robert B. Gravani - Google Books):
“Acid anionic sanitizers act rapidly and kill a broad spectrum of bacteria and have good bacteriophage activity. They have good stability, minimal odor, are nonstaining, effective in a wide temperature range, and are not affected by water hardness. An acidified rinse can be combined with the sanitizing step and removes and controls mineral films. These sanitizers can be corrosive to unprotected metals and a skin irritant, inactivated by cationic surfactants, may foam too much for CIP equipment, are less effective at higher pH, have limited and varied antimicrobial activity (including poor yeast and mold activity), and are more expensive than the halogen sanitizers. The antimicrobial effects of acid anionics appears to be through reaction of the surfactant, with positively charged bacteria by ionic attraction to penetrate cell walls and disrupt cellular activity.”
The above citation supports my thesis that Star San is more of an anti-bacterial than a true anti-microbial. Yeast and mold cells are negatively charged. Oxidizing halogens such as hypochlorus acid and iodine carry no charge, which allows them to penetrate the cell walls of yeast and mold.
I think a proton pack like in ghost busters should do the trick-sure to kill everything!
So, in theory, if one was to take a packaged bottled beer that utilized starsan all the way through the brewing process (fermenter, transfer equipment, bottling bucket or keg, beer gun, bottle, etc) and lab tested it for wild yeast and mold spores then there would be a high chance of having some of these in the finished beer?
yup, that’s the theory.
I can imagine many home-brews testing positive for these wild ones, but I find it hard to believe that they all would simply due to the use of starsan and good luck. Maybe the detection limits would be so low as to not be readily discovered or even calculated to be a risk for the beer itself in the industry (i.e. below the threshold).
Really? For what grade stainless and contact time? 300.series is not that high.
http://www.bssa.org.uk/topics.php?article=38