Starter wort Canning help

[drewbage1847]

As safe as 15lb., 60 year old aluminum kittens...

You've never met my 23 lb cat and his 16 lb sister. So, yup.. safe as those kittens at least!

[Brant]

keep in mind though, that when you can wort you are aiming to kill the botulinum microbes and prevent them from creating the toxin that bug mentioned. so if you kill them from the get go when you reach in later on to make a starter from your canned wort they will be sterile/ free of toxins.

One interesting note, the toxin botulin deactivates snare proteins which are essential to muscle contractions if I remember correctly. The Snare protein actually catches/snares its receptor.

[DrYeast]

I'm not a botulism expert, but I am a microbiologist. Bug is correct on all points, but he didn't mention one thing that's causing the confusion.

Botulism is an obligate anaerobe (= needs zero oxygen to live). Therefore, there are possibly botulism spores in your wort, and they will survive the boiling process during brewing, but because you are oxygenating and then fermenting the wort (thus raising the alcohol and lowering the pH), they will never become a problem in beer.

The problem comes when you do not ferment right away and can the wort. When you can wort, you are essentially creating an anaerobic (zero oxygen) environment, and so if you do not get the temperature to 250 F, the spores survive your heat treatment, and then have a nutrient rich, anaerobic environment (= perfect for them, deadly for us). Because you are not fermenting this wort right away, the bacteria are not inhibited by alcohol or pH, and so can grow and produce toxins in the wort, which you will not be able to get rid of, no matter what the downstream treatment.

The guidelines for canning are based on botulism (the bacteria are deadly and nearly undetectable by smell or visually, and so are the biggest threat to those that can foods). Acidic foods like pickles, tomato sauce, etc. are safe with boiling water bath treatment because the acidic pH will do the work that heat won't and inhibit the spores from growing. Non-acidic foods like vegetables or wort must be pressure cooked in order to be safe (must kill the spores). I'm not sure of the pH cutoff, but for safeties sake, I wouldn't can any wort (or food, for that matter) without reaching a 250 F temp during the canning process.

[DrYeast]

D'oh! I could have saved a lot of typing by just linking to Wikipedia. The pH cutoff for food products for boiling vs pressure cooking is 4.6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clostridium_botulinum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning

There's an easy way to tell if your food poisoning is botulism or not.
Quick onset, cramping liquid out of both ends, want to die = not botulism
Slow onset, paralysis and death = botulism

[Hammer]

Assuming that you have properly reached 250F due to 15psi, your liquid starter wort should be sterile correct? So you can store it at room temp in the pantry? Or should you store it cold to get the hot break to settle?

Does it matter?

[DannyW]

I store mine in the pantry, and the break material that's not stuck to the sides of the jar seems to settle just fine.

[Bugeater]

I store mine at room temperature too. The break material settles out pretty good for me and forms a fairly dense layer at the bottom of the jar, especially after a couple weeks. Just don't shake it up any when you go to open it and you can easily decant clear wort off the top of that layer. Out of a quart jar I get about 750-850 ml of clear wort the rest being lost to break material.

Wayne

[ddgbrewing]

I need to buy a pressure cooker and start canning me some starter wort.