Sanitiser in brew, is it ruined?

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

pjj

New Member
Joined
10/11/18
Messages
3
Reaction score
0
Location
Katoomba
I am brewing approx 35L of pale ale in a 50L closed kegmenter with pressure kit. I had a tube running out of the gas disconnect post into a bottle with 1L of stellar san as a blow off tube. I cold crashed but forgot to disconnect this line and hit it with some CO2. So it has now sucked back about 400mls of sanitiser into the fermenter that wasn't fresh. Is it ruined? Should I chalk it up to experience, please help.
 
Would you put a teaspoon of sanitiser in a glass of orange juice and offer it to your friends and family?
 
Ive had 600mls of sanitiser suck back into a beer. It won a competition of sorts against 6 other beers. I wouldnt worry about it, just taste it.
 
LD50 in rat models is ~1500 mg/kg. So for a 70 kg rat (human?), you could have 105 g before it kills you. This is 70 L of mixed (diluted) Starsan. Even if it were 10x more toxic to humans than rats, you could still have 7 L. In any case, you'd die from hyponatraemia before the Starsan got you.

In beer? You'll get beer drinker's potomania before a tiny 400 mL of diluted Starsan does anything.
 
Just on LD50, that's the dose needed to kill 50% of a population. It says nothing about how sick the surviving 50% get even though they survive.
Certainly nothing about long term consequences, cumulative harm...
Probably will do you no major or obvious harm
 
Correct – I assumed the OP was a giant rat, representing the median giant rat population. :p
 
Ive had 600mls of sanitiser suck back into a beer. It won a competition of sorts against 6 other beers. I wouldnt worry about it, just taste it.
LOL Did you keep the recipe and do it again :)
 
Last edited:
Reminds me of the song, "Bluey Brink" about a shearer who drank sulphuric acid line-cleaner by mistake and came back for more. Surely the surfactant and phos' acid in it would be somewhat neutralised by the fermentation? 400ml/35000ml is a fair bit of a dilution. Dare I say, "It'll put hairs on ya chest!"
 
I am brewing approx 35L of pale ale in a 50L closed kegmenter with pressure kit. I had a tube running out of the gas disconnect post into a bottle with 1L of stellar san as a blow off tube. I cold crashed but forgot to disconnect this line and hit it with some CO2. So it has now sucked back about 400mls of sanitiser into the fermenter that wasn't fresh. Is it ruined? Should I chalk it up to experience, please help.
StellarSan is mainly Phosphoric acid that yeast will use. Just condition the beer for a week or two at about 20C. The remaining yeast should deal with it. Alternatively bottle or keg condition with some CBC-1.
https://www.kegland.com.au/lalbrew-cbc-1-x-11g-lallemand.html
 
Thanks for your advice guys. Might taste it then just bottle a few for a tasting experiment. What is LD50??
 
It's the median lethal dose of a substance, i.e. what dose would kill half a given population. My post above was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and there are really too many variables to work it out. I was just pointing out that it's so dilute that it won't be a health hazard.
 
I've accidentally done it with a mini keg as the blow off chamber. Now I dont add the dip tube so it cant happen again. It was maybe 300-400ml phos sanitizer to a 20lt brew. I could taste the acidity it added so I tipped it. I couldn't drink it with a clear conscious. The pH didn't seem drastically lower but I could taste it.
 
Back in my early days, I may or may not have rehydrated US-05 with starsan, because the packet said sterilised water..... The batch was fine.
 
Back
Top