Throw Out Your Cubes

[donburke]

the people are responding

 

[Thirsty Boy]

By the way: Botulism basteria survive boiling (no they dont, botulism bacteria die just as easily at boiling as all other bacteria - botulism spores on the other hand are considerably tougher. However, they also dont just "survive" at boiling, they can however survive for longer and a log reduction tKes a lot longer... but boil for long enough and you still kill them all. You're talking considerably longer than a typical boil though. But - it so happens that if you boil them in a lower pH environment... that changes things. An hour long boil at typical wort pH would take a particularly tough and rugged botulism spore to survive) but don't do so well in low pH, sugar rich environs (now this is about the ondidtions required for the spores to germinate) (not sure wort is low enough its not or sugar rich enough its not to be devestating). Botulism toxins (the scary bits) don't live through boiling. which doesn't matter, because the spores can, then they germinate in the wort and then produce the toxins. Can either live through fermentation (I keep reading that there are no human pathogens that can grow in beer and i dont believe there are, but the bacteria grew in wort not beer and the toxins just went along for the ride into your beer)?

I am actually interested in real data rather than Darren's persistent bleating which is never accompanied by actually engaging with the reasonable counterpoints or questions. The closest he got this time was some fairly long drawn bow in regards to STDs. As i said before, i strongly suspect that Darren could try as much as he liked to provide you with that information and not be able to - given the relatively low number of homebrewers who no-chill - even if no-chill were the ripest botulism growing environment of any of the regular food preserving techniques, its still likely that there simply hasn't been a case yet - doesn't mean that if its actually dangerous there wont be.

As for nitrite free sausage - I know your thoughts on this but I regularly consume an old Italian lady's offerings of cacciatore and they are delicious. I make the occasional bit of smallgood related stuff without nitrites but all are either cooked or are cured whole muscle cuts (which I undertsand to be not suceptible to infection I dont think thats actually true, might want to double check). I am interested in salami making and I am interested in additive free but I have held off going there. but you know that they could be dangerous and choose to accept the danger - thats different to refusing to hear that there might be a danger in the first place.

It may be an irrational part of me lumping nitrites in with sulphites though and I don't react well to sulphites. Never had a problem with commercial salami - I just like the idea of adding less rather than more. Might bite the bullet - my family and friends eat my smallgoods too.

Sorry for OT.

 

[lickapop]

Oh, and this is what polyethylene is made from. About as simple a plastic as is possible to produce.

Im pretty sure they use bisphenol A in the making of cheap ass polyethylene in australia.

A compound that is banned in most other countries in making plastic.

And yeah they use it in baby bottles here in Aus but for those who still are...and not using BPA free baby bottles, here are some "government" warnings about bpa baby bottles.

Do not put boiling or very hot water, infant formula, or other liquids into bottles while preparing them for your child

Before mixing water with powdered infant formula, boil the water and cool it to lukewarm

 

[lickapop]

Plastic fermenters are made of the same substance and stuff sits in this to get ingested. My take was that people have concern about stuff sitting in this while its hot. HDPE is not necessarily designed as a substance for hot liquid but it is still rated to 110-120 degrees C from memory (which means it probably takes a fair bit more but who wants or needs to risk that?)

The effects of smoking (as an ex smoker I can say this) make themselves apparent every time someone else has a cold or throat infection or they try and run up a flight of stairs. It's just most smokers will happily deny their health suffers. Cancer might come later but there's a bunch of unpleasant crap in between.

Very true... personally I will not put hot wort in a container that is not manufactured for hot water but I will smoke 30g o White OX every 3 days
Its funny how nicotine addiction can skew ones logic.

 

[lickapop]

I would NO chill in these any day of the week

Solvent dispensing SS containers... **** yeah

http://www.royalstainless.com/productbrief.htm

 

[pyrosx]

Im pretty sure they use bisphenol A in the making of cheap ass polyethylene in australia.

A compound that is banned in most other countries in making plastic.

This is flat out untrue. Canada is the only country who have banned it completely. The EU and Turkey have stopped it's use in baby bottles. That's it. (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A )

 

[stux]

This is flat out untrue. Canada is the only country who have banned it completely. The EU and Turkey have stopped it's use in baby bottles. That's it. (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A )

More so, BPA is not used in HDPE, which is what we're talking about. Afaik its primarily used in PVC and PC plastics, not PET/HDPE

From the Wikipedia BPA link:
"In general, plastics that are marked with recycle codes 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 are very unlikely to contain BPA. Some, but not all, plastics that are marked with recycle codes 3 or 7 may be made with BPA."

Note, HDPE is recycle code 2

BPA is used to make plastics hard and clear... unlike fermenters and cubes which are generally soft and translucent

 

[manticle]

Thanks for the clarification thirsty. I guess what I'm getting at is the journey from spore to toxin to finished beer seems so ridiculously remote, it's like warning people not to step outside in case they run into an escaped lion. Certainly the risk is increased if your equipment is dirty but who doesn't clean their equipment? Mine gets cleaned and sanitised with starsan so the environment inside the cube is hostile to both spores and toxins. I'd also think that if botulism poisoning was possible from contaminated beer, that there would be cases of it. Just because no-chill is relatively recent, surely somewhere, somehow in the history (very long history) of beer making, there'd be a precedent.

I'll double check some of my sausage making books on the muscle cut and botulism. Not academic micro-biology texts but the more recent ones have very strong warnings about the appropriate use of nitrites and the risk of botulism, while acknowledged as rare ,is considered very real and taken very seriously.

I'm having trouble actually finding the books at the moment - one of them is Michael Ruhlman's (Ruhlman and Polcyn) 'Charcuterie' which you may have. His webpage on food safety in curing is here which discusses the safety of cooked meats and whole muscle meats compared to minced. Bacteria can exist on the outside of the meat, just not the inside and because the outside is exposed to the air, they can't germinate. that's my understanding anyway.

http://ruhlman.com/2011/02/meat-curing-safety-issues/

@lickapop: My understanding is that HDPE (type 2) plastics manufactured in Australia do not use BPA in their manufacture. I'd be more concerned about long term storage of beer in PET. I could be wrong but I haven't been able to find info suggesting that HDPE is linked to BPA leeching.

 

[stux]

I'll double check some of my sausage making books on the muscle cut and botulism. Not academic micro-biology texts but the more recent ones have very strong warnings about the appropriate use of nitrites and the risk of botulism, while acknowledged as rare ,is considered very real and taken very seriously.

I'm having trouble actually finding the books at the moment - one of them is Michael Ruhlman's (Ruhlman and Polcyn) 'Charcuterie' which you may have. His webpage on food safety in curing is here which discusses the safety of cooked meats and whole muscle meats compared to minced. Bacteria can exist on the outside of the meat, just not the inside and because the outside is exposed to the air, they can't germinate. that's my understanding anyway.

I have "Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing", 4th Ed
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Sausage-Recipe...g/dp/0025668609

"Great Sausage Recipes and Meat Curing is the most comprehensive book available on sausage making and meat curing and has sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide. It is easily understood, contains a wide variety of recipes, and is very effective in helping solve common problems. It is written by a man who learned the art of sausage making and meat curing at a very young age and who made a living smoking and curing meats."

Its quite definitive, and the first chapter is about botulism.

a few choice quotes

"Do not forget this one cardnal rule: IF IT CAN'T BE CURED, DON'T SMOKE IT." (emphasis in original)

(curing is the process of using nitrites to preserve meat, NOT just salting, botulism spores are not desiccated to destruction via salt/osmosis)

"Most nitrite used in curing meat disappears from the product after it has accomplished its curing effects. Within two weeks after curing, the amount of nitrite remaining in a product may be as little as one-fourth the amount initially added to it."

"Cured meats products typically contain 10-40 PPM nitrite at time of purchase"

"Your mouth and your intenstines manufacture nitrite and there is some evidence that our intenstines' nitrite prevents us from poisoning ourselves with the very food we eat every day, since there is moisture in the stomach, lack of oxygen and correct temperatures for food poisoning."

"a few nitrite containing vegetables, plain old ordinary beets have been found to contain 2,760 PPM of nitrite; celery 1,600 to 2,600 PPM; lettuce 100 to 1,400 PPM; radishes 2,400 to 3000 PPM; potatoes, 120 PPM; and zuchini sqash, 600 PPM. The source for these nitrites comes from nitrogen fertizilizers. It is nitrogen that helps to produce the green color in vegetables and to make them grow faster."

...

Anyway, its a good book. If you're serious about preserving and curing meat, pick up a copy.

 

[manticle]

Cool. Always looking for extras. I'll check on the book depository.

 

[ForkBoy]

I am considering building in a copper immersion chiller into a cube - the chiller would be sealed in with the hot wort, and not removed until ready to pitch some days later.

Should I have any concerns with leaving copper exposed in wort for several days? Other threads say no problems with copper for immersion chillers & copper boilers, but not sure about an extended exposure.

I'm hoping to get the delayed pitching benefits of no chill, but reduce the bittering effects of late addition hops.

 

[manticle]

I think copper is not good in large amounts for fermentation.

Bit of a discussion here about various metals contacting wort and beer: http://www.byo.com/stories/projects-and-eq...for-homebrewers

The problem seems to be with the corrosion products of copper in an acidic environment.

 

[lickapop]

thanks for the clarification on HDPE not containing BPA.
I had not a chance to fully look into it. You learn something new everyday on here

 

[MarkBastard]

My uncle smokes weed but won't use a microwave.

 

[manticle]

Microwaves make food soggy and horrible. I tend to steer clear of them as well.

Then again I don't smoke weed either.

 

[going down a hill]

My uncle smokes weed but won't use a microwave.

I like his style.

 

[MarkBastard]

To be specific, he thinks microwaved food gives people cancer. That's why he won't use one.

 

[manticle]

Tell him the weed he's smoking has been dried with a microwave.

 

[RobW]

As a microbiologist who took a side turn into IT but still works in a reference lab I follow these botulism flare ups with interest.
In amongst the great mass of uninformed dross there is the occasional nugget of truth.

FWIW my take is that Manticle and TB have it pretty much right between them - ie: an infection is theoretically possible but in practice highly unlikely.

Darren can argue the theoretical until he's blue in the face but will never prove it - the weight of real world evidence points conclusively in the other direction. I believe he knows it too but likes stirring the pot in his charming fashion.

However I do take strong exception to this:

"a massive expansion in HBV and HIV in the heterosexual, non-asian, non-drug using community"

is pure horseshit. The vast majority of HIV, HBV (and HCV - probably more significantly) infections occur in IV drug users and men who have sex with men. Look up the figures.

 

[JDW81]

Tell him the weed he's smoking has been dried with a microwave.

A mate of mine tried that a few years ago, the house stank for months (he did accidently put it in there for 20 minutes, not 2 as he intended).