Sterilizing adjuncts

[Chunk1234]

If youre going to rack onto some sort of adjunct ... fruit peel, cinnamon sticks, cardomom pods, lemon grass that sort of thing, how much attention should you pay to sterilizing the adjuncts first?

If it's important ... how do you do it? Boil them in water/wort first?

I guess the same applies to dry hopping. How do you make sure there arent any nasties on the hops?

[Scooby]

Hops have natural antiseptic/bacterial qualities so the chances of infection are minimal.

Personally I can't see why you would want to put any of the other things you mentioned in beer but would have thought those that do would put them in the boil.

[Chunk1234]

Flavouring with things like those in my first post is pretty normal isn't it? Even a lot of commerical brewers add things like elderflowers.

Its a good point about the hops, that I wasn't aware of. The risk with other things would probably be greater then.

Can't add them to the boil because that isn't the same as racking beer onto them.

[Chunk1234]

[quote="Chris-x1Personally i'd add more delicate flavourings to the secondary fermenter where the risk of infection is slightly less and where there is less co2 given off which can carry away delicate aromas (which is why dry hopping is best done in the cask).[/quote]

My thinking exactly. Although, Im confused as to why the risk of infection is less when in secondary? If this is the case, why do you have to be so careful to steralise bottles/kegs?

With cinnamon sticks, cardomom pods and lemon grass i'd add them to a secondary after steeping in hot water at 80 deg c for 10 mins.

Is that to steralise or is that to help extract the flavours?

I want to be sure that Im not adding any bacteria to my brew by throwing stuff into the secondary. I guess steeping in hot water might acheive this as well as helping to extract flavour.

[Scooby]

Im confused as to why the risk of infection is less when in secondary? If this is the case, why do you have to be so careful to steralise bottles/kegs?

There is less risk of infection in a fermented wort, so Chris means less risk in secondary than in primary.

With cinnamon sticks, cardomom pods and lemon grass i'd add them to a secondary after steeping in hot water at 80 deg c for 10 mins.

Is that to steralise or is that to help extract the flavours?

steeping at 80c is basically pasteurising so it's to kill bacteria.

You could take samples of the beer periodically and remove the additions (put them in a muslin bag) when your happy with the flavouring

[Chunk1234]

Im confused as to why the risk of infection is less when in secondary? If this is the case, why do you have to be so careful to steralise bottles/kegs?

There is less risk of infection in a fermented wort, so Chris means less risk in secondary than in primary.

With cinnamon sticks, cardomom pods and lemon grass i'd add them to a secondary after steeping in hot water at 80 deg c for 10 mins.

Is that to steralise or is that to help extract the flavours?

steeping at 80c is basically pasteurising so it's to kill bacteria.

You could take samples of the beer periodically and remove the additions (put them in a muslin bag) when your happy with the flavouring

Thanks for the comment. My plan is to rack onto the adjunct about 3 or 4 litres of a brew I did at the weekend. Ill then take samples periodically before bottling. The rest of the brew Ill just keg as is.