I’ve been watching beer brewing tutorials. They all state that it isn’t necessary to clean out the food-grade sanitizer used to disinfect the utensils and containers used in the beer brewing process. How is food-grade sanitizer harmful for microbes but not for humans?
In: Chemistry
Drink a bit of alcohol, and it probably won’t kill you. Submerge yourself in alcohol to the point everything you eat drink or breath is saturated in alcohol, and you’ll die pretty quickly of alcohol poisoning.
Toxins tend to become lethal at a certain body mass to toxin ratio. It takes more alcohol to give a big person alcohol poisoning than a smaller person because the toxin (alcohol) spreads out among the body. microbes are very small, so they reach that threshold with a much smaller amount of toxin than it would take to kill a human.
On top of this, not everything that is toxic to one creature is toxic to others. Chocolate is much more toxic to dogs than humans. Penicillin is very toxic to most bacteria, yet not so much to humans.
I work in a restaurant so should probably understand more of this than I do, but my impression is that the METHOD they use for sanitizing isn’t one that is toxic. It doesn’t necessarily have harsh chemicals in it, or sanitizes though a process that is bad for microbes, like being an acidic solution or something, but isn’t necessarily harmful for humans. It also may just evaporate away after being applied to a surface over time, but I’m not 100% on that. I know we’re not supposed to mix our dish sanitizer with water that’s too hot, though that was never thoroughly explained to me.
They might be using campden tablets. It releases sulfur dioxides that help sanitize and prevent wild yeast and bacteria from growing. Some folks are allergic to it but if your not it’s safe to use.
Food-grade means that it is safe for humans to ingest.
Microbes and humans have very different systems and are damaged by different things. For example some microbes die if exposed to oxygen but for humans we die if we go without. This generally comes down to how the cells are lines, the process of cellular respiration and the thickness of dead cells protecting those underneath.
Alcohol and sanitizers typically kills germs by disrupting the mucus membrane that holds them together. If you really simplify it they are basically a bag of jelly and we can poke a hole by exposing them to a sanitizer.
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