How important is sanitisation when fermenting foods?

One aspect of any fermentation activity that should never be overlooked is sanitisation. To ensure you achieve consistent results with all your fermented drinks and foodstuffs make sure diligent effort is made every time to clean and sanitise. This allows the desired microbes the best opportunity to do their work without competition by unfavourable organisms.

One aspect of any fermentation activity that should never be overlooked is sanitisation. To ensure you achieve consistent results with all your fermented drinks and foodstuffs make sure diligent effort is made every time to clean and sanitise. This allows the desired microbes the best opportunity to do their work without competition by unfavourable organisms.

With lactic acid fermentation incorrect sanitisation will cause organisms such as yeast or mould to grow, which will adversely affect texture & cause “off” flavours. With alcohol ferments incorrect sanitisation will cause contamination from organisms which will result in turning your alcohol into vinegar. Nothing worse than a ruined batch!

Be sure that all your fermentation equipment (inside and out), utensils, work surfaces as well as your hands are both cleaned and sanitised before you begin.

The first step involved is to clean.

Cleaning involves washing all equipment in hot water to remove debris, dirt, loose matter from a previous ferment etc. Then using a cleaning agent such as sodium percarbonate, follow manufacturer’s instructions to create a solution to scrub all equipment that will be used in the fermentation activity.

The next step is to sanitise.

Below we have mentioned the two easiest sanitisation approaches that we employ. Other methods include diluted bleach & Iodine based sanitisers (which we avoid as we found it can impart iodine flavours to the final ferment, yum!).

StellarSan

While we offer a range of chemical sanitisers in store & online, the easiest no rinse sanitiser we offer is the StellarSan foaming sanitiser, it is our preferred method of sanitisation. StellarSan will swiftly & efficiently sanitise your equipment with a soak time of just 2 minutes & can be used without rinsing, but we suggest you do. Furthermore, Atomic 15 will not impart any flavours to your drinks or foodstuffs.

Heat

Not to be overlooked, heat is always an effective method of sterilisation for metal & glass materials. But we do not recommend this method for plastic as heat can cause warping. Here we outline 3 ways you can achieve sanitisation with heat:

• Oven: Place equipment in an oven preheated to 180 deg Celsius for an hour.
• Dishwasher: Place equipment through a cycle without detergent. The dry cycle will sanitise your equipment.
• Pressure cooker: Place equipment in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes at 130 deg Celsius with a psi of 20.