How long is sterile?

[jimbeefish]

Hi everyone this my first post so apologies if in wrong dept. I have noticed people after sterilsing equipment they pour back into a dj then seal top with foil for future use I guess, my question is how long can you keep re-using solution ? cheers

 

[Chippy_Tea]

i use miltons tablets and they works for 24 hours, i think what you have read is members sterelising the DJ's then capping them with foil so no nasties get in.
For thee price of the steriliser i would rather sterilise my equipment just before i use it, this takes the guess work out, why ruin a brew for the sake of a little extra time on brew day.

No need to rinse

Sterilises in 15 mins

Ideal for travel

Stays sterile for 24hrs

For baby items

Kills 99.9% of germs

Sterilising tablets

 

[Aleman]

i use miltons tablets and they works for 24 hours

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

NO

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Aleman care to explain your comment?

 

[oldbloke]

I wash, sanitise, cover, store, then re-sanitise before use

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I wash, sanitise, cover, store, then re-sanitise before use

Same here Oldbloke, i thought that was the way you were supposed to do it.

 

[Aleman]

Aleman care to explain your comment?

Chlorine based sanitisers loose effectiveness with time as the chlorine gas escapes from solution . . . this lowers the level of hypochlorus acid in the solution . . rendering less effective over time.

Of course sanitising, rinsing Sealing and then rinsing/re sanitising/rinsing before use does mean that bug carrying airborne debris isn't going to get into the vessel, so you will be able to use it with little risk after 24 hours.

Any other method is playing Russian roulette . . . it may work it may not.

 

[Moley]

For starters, nothing is actually sterile, it's just close enough for our needs.

"Disinfected" might be a better word, or we might even accept "sanitised" as the forum is now American owned, but never with a Z.

I clean and disinfect DJs immediately after use then keep them 'sweet' with a couple of Campden tablets in an inch or so of water, then cover the necks with cling film.

When I need one for racking, if it still assaults my nostrils after removing the cling film, I will drain the jar and use it immediately. That might be after 2-3 months.

If you are asthmatic or suffer from any breathing difficulties, DO NOT sniff sulphite solutions!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Aleman care to explain your comment?

Chlorine based sanitisers loose effectiveness with time as the chlorine gas escapes from solution . . . this lowers the level of hypochlorus acid in the solution . . rendering less effective over time.

.

As i said above I take my already clean equipment and sterilise it 15 minutes before i use it ( the contact time for milton is 15 minutes) i have always done this with no problems at all, at no point did i say i use it up to 24 hours and did not recommend the Member who started the thread leave it for 24 hours, the packaging says you can use it up to 24 hours and as its a well known baby product i assume it is safe to do so.
I would never use something i sterilised weeks before without sterilising it again, that might be over the top but its the way i like to do it.

 

[Aleman]

at no point did i say i use it up to 24 hours and did not recommend the Member who started the thread leave it for 24 hours, the packaging says you can use it up to 24 hours and as its a well known baby product i assume it is safe to do so.

Sorry I thought when you said (before adding an awful lot more to your original post)

i use miltons tablets and they works for 24 hours

that you were saying just that. :hmm:

Just what is the effective chlorine concentration on milton?

Just because it's safe on baby stuff does not mean it's safe . . . and quite frankly the claim "Stays Sterile for 24 hours" is complete and utter **** . . along with the claim "Kills 99.9% of Germs" . . . so does soap for crying out loud!!! Their definition of sterile and mine are completely different . . . Sterile 100% dead, No Spores, prions or anything left that can possibly contaminate it in the future . . . and is actually practically impossible to achieve with chemical sanitation (using household chemicals)

 

[oldbloke]

I wash, sanitise, cover, store, then re-sanitise before use

Same here Oldbloke, i thought that was the way you were supposed to do it.

Well, I used to just rinse before storing, but then when I came to use, I sometimes had nasty cleanups to do first.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

at no point did i say i use it up to 24 hours and did not recommend the Member who started the thread leave it for 24 hours, the packaging says you can use it up to 24 hours and as its a well known baby product i assume it is safe to do so.

Sorry I thought when you said (before adding an awful lot more to your original post)

i use miltons tablets and they works for 24 hours

that you were saying just that. :hmm:

Just what is the effective chlorine concentration on milton?

Just because it's safe on baby stuff does not mean it's safe . . . and quite frankly the claim "Stays Sterile for 24 hours" is complete and utter **** . . along with the claim "Kills 99.9% of Germs" . . . so does soap for crying out loud!!! Their definition of sterile and mine are completely different . . . Sterile 100% dead, No Spores, prions or anything left that can possibly contaminate it in the future . . . and is actually practically impossible to achieve with chemical sanitation (using household chemicals)

I haven't read the instructions fully but assume it means you can put the babys bottles in the steriliser 23 hours after making it and it will still sterilise the equipment, as i said i use it as soon as i make it so its not really a big deal if it does or it doesn't, and i havent had any problems having used gallons of the stuff.

 

[jimbeefish]

Thanks for the comments, it answers my question, ...full sterile clean just before use, its just not worth the risk of using older "solutions" kept however.

 

[Brewtrog]

[quote="Chippy_Tea":3o6it0dv]at no point did i say i use it up to 24 hours and did not recommend the Member who started the thread leave it for 24 hours, the packaging says you can use it up to 24 hours and as its a well known baby product i assume it is safe to do so.

Sorry I thought when you said (before adding an awful lot more to your original post)

i use miltons tablets and they works for 24 hours

that you were saying just that. :hmm:

Just what is the effective chlorine concentration on milton?

Just because it's safe on baby stuff does not mean it's safe . . . and quite frankly the claim "Stays Sterile for 24 hours" is complete and utter **** . . along with the claim "Kills 99.9% of Germs" . . . so does soap for crying out loud!!! Their definition of sterile and mine are completely different . . . Sterile 100% dead, No Spores, prions or anything left that can possibly contaminate it in the future . . . and is actually practically impossible to achieve with chemical sanitation (using household chemicals)

I haven't read the instructions fully but assume it means you can put the babys bottles in the steriliser 23 hours after making it and it will still sterilise the equipment, as i said i use it as soon as i make it so its not really a big deal if it does or it doesn't, and i havent had any problems having used gallons of the stuff.[/quote:3o6it0dv]

Yeah Milton's means that the solution is still usable within 24 hours of making, not that it'll keep stuff sterile for 24 hours.

Just because it's safe on baby stuff does not mean it's safe . . . and quite frankly the claim "Stays Sterile for 24 hours" is complete and utter **** . . along with the claim "Kills 99.9% of Germs" . . . so does soap for crying out loud!!! Their definition of sterile and mine are completely different . . . Sterile 100% dead, No Spores, prions or anything left that can possibly contaminate it in the future . . . and is actually practically impossible to achieve with chemical sanitation (using household chemicals)

With it being safe on baby stuff means it's probably just as safe for brewing. Remember that brewing has been going since roughly the start of civilisation - far longer than sterilisation - Also beer and wine were drank at times as a safer alternative to water. I reckon that we have gone a bit obsessive on sterilising for brewing, just as we have with everything else. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you have equal chance of a good brew between a filthy and a clean FV, but if you want to be picky the brew will pick up other microbes unless you are keeping the FV in aseptic conditions, which I highly doubt.
So saying of course I make sure all my kit is as clean as practicable. I'm just suggesting that some people try to take it too far without any noticeable benefits

 

[Sly Fox]

Haha, prions in wine, imagine that... Mad Vintner's disease... :shock:

Actually the hospital sterilising departments don't claim to be able to destroy prions, although they do state that the equipment they prepare is sterile. If surgical equipment is used for a patient who could have been exposed to a prion disease, it can't ever be used for another patient. Because the equipment for an op costs thousands of pounds they store it in case the same patient needs an op again.

 

[Moley]

Never heard of them, and my dictionary goes straight from printing to prior, so I had to google it. To save anyone else the bother:

prion (noun)
1. a small petrel of southern seas, having a wide bill fringed with comb-like plates for feeding on planktonic crustaceans.
2. a protein in the brain, an abnormal form of which is thought to be the transmissable agent responsible for certain spongiform encephalopathies, such as BSE, scrapie, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and kuru.

I guess we aren't talking about stray sea birds here.

 

[oldbloke]

I struggle to see where prions could enter the brewing process!

 

[joe 90]

I sterilise everything just before I use them with Tesco cheap thin bleach that way you have less chance of ruining a full days work of brewing
its a lot of work doing an ag brew to find out it tastes like vinigar :lol: :lol: :

 

[Aleman]

I struggle to see where prions could enter the brewing process!

How about Tubby's Cock Ale ??

I was being somewhat facetious, but can see that I really need to avoid making any comments or answer any questions on Cleansing and sanitising.

My final comment is, that there are a lot of brewers who think everything is perfectly alright with their beers, but when entered into a blind competition around 50% of the beers exhibit bacterial contamination.

 

[oldbloke]

I'm sure a lot of my stuff has various bacteria in it, the state of my sink is shocking