Why does Northern Brewer's Fast Pitch Canned Wort not require any boiling?

Northern Brewer has a product called Fast Pitch Canned Wort. The instructions say that you can just mix it with water out of the tap and then pitch yeast to make a yeast starter.

Why does this not requiring any boiling? Presumably the canned wort itself is sterile, but what about the water that is added, and what about the outside of the container? In a video, a Northern Brewer employee just opens the can with his grubby hands, adds water and pitches yeast into it.

Why is this not a recipe for a an infected starter?

Topic yeast-starters homebrew

Category Mac


Malt extract does not need to be boiled to make beer. It is perfectly possible to make beer using extract and cold water although it s a little easier if you dissolve the extract in boiling water first - just to make it more mobile and to pasteurise it if you feel it is needed. But just getting it hot to get out of the can and into the fermentation vessel is all that is needed. Once the Saccharomyces is fermenting well it forms a stable microbiome and (all things being equal) such a microbiome reduces the chance of infection from other sources. Sort of like penicillin mould keeps many bacteria at bay. Or used to....

Generally speaking water sources are chosen because they don't have contaminants. If one has to boil the water that one drinks then it will have to be boiled for any culinary use, including making beer. However fermentation (with saccharomyces or lactobacilius) is a method that can render water borne pathogens inactive and has probably been used as such for aeons.

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