What did Star San sanitizer do to my metals?

[MacKozi]

I left my carboy brush and mixer, I uses for aerating wort, in a 5 gallon buck of Star San and noticed that they changed color below the water line after about and hour of being in there. Does anyone know what happened? And also I still used the mixer to aerate my batch. Could I have harmed my batch by doing that?

 

[M0KCE]

Star San is acidic. Your tools look galvanized. Personally I'd toss the batch. Better safe than sorry with a case of zinc poisoning. YMMV.

EDIT: Misread. Yeah, you probably leeched some zinc of in to your sanitizing solution, you'll be fine. You wort will be fine. I may not be fine.

 

[The_Bishop]

Ate all the plating right off. The star san is now zinc and iron heavy, I'd throw it out. Don't think I'd use those in beer any longer, either.

 

[mobilecabinworks]

The acid oxidized the zinc, removing some of it also. The tools are fine, the starsan probably is too, but it's cheap, so toss it. You are not going to get zinc poisoning either haha. You may experience some future oxidation on the tools where the plating is gone, but it won't hurt anything. Buff them with a scouring pad and see how they look.

If it makes you feel any better, I'm a welder and machinist by trade.

 

[IslandLizard]

Don't toss those tools out, it will happen again. It's what brew equipment starts to look like after a while. As said already, just buff em a bit or leave as is.

If you want brass or copper fittings to shine brightly, you now know how to do that.

 

[The_Bishop]

My recommendation on not using the stirrer for aeration any longer is based on the fact that the surface is not smooth any longer, and may harbor bacteria. A wine degasser is a better option than a paint stirrer, and is actually built for the purpose. It can survive long soaks in star san with no problems, too.

 

[MacKozi]

Damn I was really excited about this brew. So should I toss the batch or no? It just started fermenting. What are the real taste/possible health concerns because most of the plating probably just diluted in the Star San tub, right?

 

[mobilecabinworks]

Don't toss it!!! You'll be fine, and the beer will be fine. Even if a little zinc got in your beer it's not going to hurt you. Zinc is something our body needs. Whenever I start feeling sick I take zinc and vitamin c pills.

 

[The_Bishop]

No, don't toss it. The plating came off in your star san, not your beer... So unless you left it sitting in your beer for an hour or two, you should be fine.

 

[MacKozi]

Should I be worried about any other toxic materials that could have been in the galvanized coating? Like anti rust chemicals or anything. There was a slight black layer of grime on it when I pulled it from the Star San. The paint stirrer only came in contact with my wort for about 30 seconds when aerating.

 

[day_trippr]

For the paint mixer, the odds are high it's just zinc over cheap steel. Even if a bit of either got in your product (as opposed to what leached into your Star San reservoir) it's diluted through your batch, you consume iron every day whether you want to or not, and a little zinc one time won't harm you.

Toss the mixer - it's for paint, not beer - and wherever you bought that brush, take it back and beat them senseless with it for selling you a non stainless steel version...

Cheers!

 

[augiedoggy]

I left my carboy brush and mixer, I uses for aerating wort, in a 5 gallon buck of Star San and noticed that they changed color below the water line after about and hour of being in there. Does anyone know what happened? And also I still used the mixer to aerate my batch. Could I have harmed my batch by doing that?

It is acid so...
lots of people leave ball valves in starsan only to find it eats the chrome finish off the ball inside in many cases.

keep in mind most of us that have used regular electric elements before the ones with the stainless bases started being copied and the prices became reasonable have had the same zinc coated steel bases break down in our Boil kettles with no harmful effects... a lot of folks just deal with the nasty rusted or corroded bases still and it just puts a little iron in the beer... in the old days you could put a magnet in a bowl of total cereal and it would be attracted to the magnet because they fortified it with so much iron so...

personally if you want to worry about metal contamination Id be more worried about more toxic metals like copper which is banned from direct contact with any other foodgrade type of use (most immersion chillers) and even those dont appear to have any dentramental effects with normal useage.

 

[GHBWNY]

Should I be worried about any other toxic materials that could have been in the galvanized coating? Like anti rust chemicals or anything.

Likely no other materials in the zinc coating. The trace amount of zinc that is in your wort would be at best negligible in relation to any harm it would do to the human body. Zinc is an essential trace metal with very low toxicity in humans. Measurable zinc toxicity requires an extremely high dose of zinc (20X the US RDA) over a long period of time, so I doubt your brewing tools would qualify.

 

[MacKozi]

Thanks for all the advice. Unfortunately I had to throw the batch out anyway. When I came home for work yesterday I had ALOT of activity in the airlock and wort was going into it and I neglected to do anything about it and when I woke up this morning I found that the lid was blown off and **** was everywhere. Maybe this was a sign from above that I shouldn't have kept it. Thanks for all the help anyway. Now time to go buy a blow off tube that fits my fermenter.

 

[IslandLizard]

That's sad to hear. Now we'll never know...

An explosive blow off is no reason to pour the beer down the drain. Those get rarely infected actually. Stuff is coming out, not going in. Open fermentation.

 

[MacKozi]

The idea of having the lid wide open in my grimey closet with spiders and what not is enough to frighten me. Good thing I only invested a few days into it before I ruined it and not any longer.

 

[mobilecabinworks]

That sucks you threw it out! It sounds like it was going well. That much blowoff that fast is a good sign. It's the lingering slimes and crudes that you find after a few weeks that is the bad news. Never seen anything show sign of infection in the first few days. Should of just let it keep exploding!
<--- See here

 

[M0KCE]

Spiders add flavor.

 

[The_Bishop]

'Dry Spidering' is all the rage these days!

 

[GHBWNY]

'Dry Spidering' is all the rage these days!

Especially if it's a Jumping Brown Recluse --- dry-spidering and "hopping" all in one.