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Hello all, I have seen some beer styles with very short boil times. Has anyone ever considered using UV sterilization to get the wort "bug free" before pitching? It would definitely affect the flavor, but I wonder if it would work to prevent infection.

Thoughts?

That would be an exceedingly bad idea, I think. UV is going to skunk the beer all to heck: https://byo.com/hops/item/2263-lightstr ... ed-brewing" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

But presumably if you don't boil the beer you will have no hops in it so there would be no alpha acids to skunk

Would it work for a lambic that had only beta acids?

According to this: http://www.livestrong.com/article/25272 ... -on-yeast/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

...you may have issues with wild yeast. Yeast seems to like UV light

UV light can impact beer in many ways aside from isomerized alpha acids. That is the main contributor to skunky beer but there are certainly many others.

It is also a relatively poor method of sterilization, i ran UV sterilizers in labs and fish tanks for years and it certainly was not 100% efficient. When you are talking about critters that live on the scale of millions / ml an efficiency of 99.99% leaves a lot to be desired

All good points! I did think about the skunk problem, but wanted to hear if anyone has tried it.

In any case, I have an inline water UV sterilizer, it would be interesting to test it to see how effective it is on the microbes. If I ever try it, I will post back some results if I don't keel over from the brew

Cheers

I thought it was an interesting idea though.

GuingesRock wrote:I thought it was an interesting idea though.

I agree

I will think about trying it and plating some pre and post sterilization material on DME plates to see how much growth there is, and perhaps talk to some analytical chemists I know about looking for weird products forming. I doubt there would be anything more toxic than ethanol.

Either way, whats the worst thing that could happen?

Berzerker wrote:Either way, whats the worst thing that could happen?

I firmly believe that in most situtations, the worst thing that can happen is death by bunga

A lot of no boil approaches still raise the temp. to the point where isomerization can occur. If you kept the hops out entirely, or added isomerized hop extracts after sterilization, I guess that would get around the issue.

Interesting thought...

Someone asked a similar question on Probrewer in regards to the practicality of us UV to prep uphopped wort for short term storage. Someone replied that the turbidity of wort would make UV ineffective. I don't know if that is true or not... http://discussions.probrewer.com/showth ... hoped-Wort" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Here's a study where they did sensory evaluations of commercial beers exposed to various UV levels. It looks like there might be more to contest with than just skunking:

"The general observation was that at the low UV dosage, only the lightstruck flavour was present, but that this increasingly gave way to a more intense burnt rubber off flavour as the UV exposure increased. It is interesting to note that a high amount of dissolved oxygen would have been accumulated during the trial run. However, no oxidation off-flavours were detected in the control samples, which were passed through the UV system in an identical manner, but with the UV lamps switched off. Since oxidation was apparent in all UV treated beer samples, it was suggested that the UV treatment most likely accelerated any oxidation reactions of dissolved oxygen present in the beer." http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0785.x/pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;