Sanitise or Sterilise

[parky]

Bonjour,
Can anyone tell me the diffrence between Sanitising and Sterilising.
Good Health,
Parky

[Aleman]

Sterilising kills everything including spores

Sanisiting is taking out the trash

[gregorach]

Oh god, not this again...

I try to use "disinfect" rather than "sanitise", simply to avoid all the bloody arguments. I'm of the opinion that "sterile" means just that - absolutely sterile, to professional laboratory or surgical standards. So if you ask me, most people don't actually sterilise anything. But apparently some folk don't like hearing that, and I can't really be bothered with the argument... However, when I use the word "sterilise", I mean proper high-pressure steam sterilisation in a pressure cooker or autoclave, or equivalent sterilisation by other means - absolutely 100% of everything killed stone dead. Whereas when I say "sanitise" or "disinfect", I just mean upwards of 99.9% of everything killed stone dead, which is all your typical chemical "sterilisers" will actually achieve. Soaking in VWP, StarSan, whatever, is disinfection, not sterilisation. If you ask me.

[parky]

Bonjour Guys,
Thanks for your responce, and thank you Gregorach for the thread that you put in,being new to brewing, i will now be able to understand what these two words mean, when i read them in the forum.
Goog Health,
Parky

[Graham]

I am happy with disinfect or sterilise. Sterilise is a fairly standard term, to mean disinfect, that has been used in both British professional brewing and home brewing for decades. On my desk as I write this is a box of Boots baby sterilising tablets, although why anyone would want to sterilise a baby is beyond me, so it is certainly a legal term in the domestic sense. It is common usage.

Anything that delivers hypochlorous acid as the active agent is a true chemical sterilant anyway. Nothing survives it at pH5, not even hardy spores given a high enough concentration and contact time. So, even these Boots sterilising tablets, the agent is a sterilant, even though at the specified ~150ppm they are not used at sterilant concentrations. That probably qualifies the use of the term sterilise. There is also the concept of (I cannot remember the exact term, but is something like:) industrially sterile, which means sterile enough for the intended application.

Most disinfectants are not broad spectrum, things like quats do not attack all bugs and iodophor actually supports the growth of some micro-organisms. There will be bugs that Starsan will not attack, and the phosphoric acid in Starsan, the phosphate, will support the growth of those that survive. I would not like to see these things described as sterilants.

[barney]

Dunc,

I think I understand the distinction your drawing regarding autoclave of slopes etc, I have done something similar myself in a pressure cooker for yeast propagation, to ensure that Sterilisation has taken place.
A question for those more chemically minded, with the chlorine soaking only killing 99.9% of organisms, would the results of the use of Caustic soda be classed as Sterile rather than sanitised? I was under the impression that it killed everything living and dissolved everything organic given time.

[gregorach]

A question for those more chemically minded, with the chlorine soaking only killing 99.9% of organisms, would the results of the use of Caustic soda be classed as Sterile rather than sanitised? I was under the impression that it killed everything living and dissolved everything organic given time.

That's a good question... I'm finding conflicting information on that. Bloody nasty stuff though...

[Kev888]

Interesting info on here - the previous 'what do you call it' type thread perhaps got tied up with differing opinions on terminology, and kind of obscured the important stuff on the effectiveness of different ways of 'obliterating nasties'. Though it did at least show that the terminology used by many home brewers is pretty much ambiguous or interchangeable in practice, irrespective of what may or may not be technically or legally correct.

After discovering starsan I'm hooked on the 'near-instant, no rinse' thing, but for smaller more sensitive jobs (not involving copper) I've also been getting on well lately with Peracetic Acid, which I believe is one of the better ones for a chemical approach. However, as I understand things its not even in the same game as caustic soda if there is any organic matter to deal with, and once diluted it doesn't last like starsan does - so probably each has their place.

To be frank though, if things are clean then in general brewing (special/sensitive cases like yeast propagation aside) I've never had a problem through the failure of 'any' half-decent sanitiser/steriliser/disinfectant. I started years ago with chempro SDP and other proprietry cleaner products, then to simple bleach (which i still use sometimes) and now to starsan and peracetic acid. In all that time, the few issues I've had can be traced almost certainly to faults in my process (absent-mindedness with untreated implements or laxety in disassembling stuff to clean properly). Thats the main reason why I love the no rinse approach - you get into the habbit of quickly spraying pretty much anything and everything just prior to using it, no planning ahead and overlooking things

Cheers
kev