Can I boil my stir bars?

[mooboy76]

But in actuality, I will lose it WAY before it ever becomes demagnetized. That's why I buy them a bunch at a time.
Mylo

+1 Those buggers LOVE to fly down drains or slip out of your hands when they're wet.

Just use them as your fridge magnets

[mr x]

I don't think the stir-bar needs to be magnetized to be picked up by the stirplate.

That might be true, for a while, but do you really want to risk turning your stir-bar into a brew-wrecking missile from hell because you decoupled the magnetic link between the stir-bar and plate?

That's a daily event with stir-bars. No worries there. If your glass can't handle a thrown stir-bar, it's not long for this world anyway.

[Frankenhop]

I guess I'm a little too used to lab-grade stir plates, because the one I've got will break through a brand-new borosilicate erlenmeyer like it's tissue paper if it ever decouples at max out (2k rpm, used for nutrient mixing pre-yeast addition). Not fun, but then that's what safety goggles are for...

But, back to the main question: Sure you could technically use your stir bar and not take it out before the boil, but depending on the brand it's casing may melt and depending on it's material it's magnetic properties may degrade. It's better to just avoid the problem and get a stir bar retriever.

[mr x]

I use Dow-Corning and Fisher-Scientific lab plates. They will not throw a stir bar through a flask.

[6thstreetbrewer]

I've got my own stir bar retriever. It's called a magnet. I just drag it across the bottom and up the side and voila. It's pretty nice to keep it in place when dumping the starter in the fermenter. Haven't lost one yet, good thing too as I only have one.

[Tarp Town]

Is the boiling of the flask just part of the starter procedure, or is that the sanitizing portion?

I've just been using StarSan.

[Thirsty Boy]

easy - yu boil your stir bar with your starter - and then when you aren't using it, you store it stuck to you fridge between two nice powerful magnets so any loss of magnetism is fixed, like this



a couple of little 10mm rare earth magnets (spares from stirplate construction) and a week between starters will re-magnetise the most stubbornly buggered stirbar (remember to put the magnets on the fridge with different poles facing out at either end)

Thirsty