Question about sanitation (spit / saliva)

[saeroner]

I'm a total newbie. But, i have watched hours of YouTube videos on brewing and all of the talk about sanitation and how important it is to keep everything clean after the wort/hops boil, yet most youtubers talk AND SPIT directly into the cooled off wort (we all know we slightly spit when we talk). Isn't saliva one of the most dirtiest germ infested liquid?

Sorry I keep wondering after all the importance of sanitation -- yet i lol when i see it.

Am i wrong here?

 

[jhall4]

You're not wrong - it's not a sanitary practice by any means.

However, you have to consider that we're practicing sanitation but we're not working in a sterile environment. Unwanted microorganisms ARE getting into your wort whether you like it or not. We want to minimize that, so talking over wort might not be best practice, but we fight microorganisms with mechanisms beyond sanitation.

One of the reasons hops gained favor as a brewing additive, besides their bittering/flavor/aroma contributions, was that they act as a preservative. They're actually fairly antimicrobial. Hops in your beer help to fight off all the unwanteds that get into your beer.

Next, we pitch a lot of yeast. This is because it's healthy for the yeast which leads directly to better beer, but it has the ancillary benefit of giving the yeast a massive head start on whatever might have gotten into the wort before it. That means our yeast can easily out compete whatever else is in there.

Finally, we're making beer! That means it has alcohol and is somewhat acidic. This isn't a very friendly environment for microorganisms, which means your beer ends up safe to drink. In fact, I've heard it said (but have never verified personally, so take this with a grain of salt) that nothing harmful to humans can grow in beer. It might ruin how your beer tastes, but it should still be safe to drink.

In the end, some combination of those factors are covering up for whatever small mistakes in sanitation those youtube brewers (and all of us at home) make while we're brewing.

 

[ImNoExpert]

Well put.

 

[BrewCrewKevin]

Yes, very well put.

It needs to be sanitized, not sterilized. There's a difference. We want to LIMIT exposure to bacteria, but do not need to eliminate it.

In my experience, it's actually fairly difficult to get a batch infected. I had 1 batch that got infected and had to dump, but I'll admin I got pretty lax on sanitation. It was early in my brewing career. I've even (accidentally) stirred with unsanitized spoons at the end or after the boil and have luckily not had problems. Certainly use a sanitizer on all equipment and take care, because dumping a batch sucks. But the small amount of saliva from talking or leaning over the pot shouldn't be enough to infect it.