Doomed from the beginning...?

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I suspect the DAP is like apple seeds, won't hurt you in small quantites... they didn't even have the LD50 data on the MSDS so it can't be THAT toxic. Still, I wouldn't go around eating the stuff, but I also wouldn't be worried about drinking wine where it might not have been fully consumed.
 
With an organic yeast nutrient, which is composed of autolyzed yeast, it would be the equivalent of eating brewer's yeast, more or less. So no problem there.

On the other hand DAP is toxic. Here is the MSDS. You wouldn't want to consume it (or DAP containing nutrients like Fermaid K) directly.

Yes, and Sodium Nitrite, the salt used for curing salami and other meats is incredibly toxic, yet we eat it every time we have salami.
Lots of things are toxic, and if you like salt on your food don't use Sodium Nitrite, but in small doses, it keeps botulism and other nasties at bay.
I'm certain Sorbistate and metabisulphate aren't great for you too, but we use it all the time to ensure stuff in our mead is dead.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about how large amounts of this or that can kill you, when we only ever consume small amounts. I just don't get it really...
 
There has been a lot of discussion lately about how large amounts of this or that can kill you, when we only ever consume small amounts. I just don't get it really...

Fear-mongering? ...it's the only explanation I can come up with... scaring people makes the news...
 
Well, one caveat on that - some poisons get flushed out of our bodies and as long as we consume them in small doses we're fine - others build up and will eventually mess you up badly. So it's not all fear mongering just because we only consume small amounts of these poisons, the key is largely figuring out which poisons are which.

Though yes, fear mongering is definitely the bread and butter of what we call "the news"! ;)
 
As far as sanitizing, there's really no need to boil anything at all, even if you don't have Star-san or anything like that. Just make a solution of bleach (I believe a 1/4 cup per gallon is plenty, you could probably get by with even less), soak anything you want to sanitize for a couple of minutes, rinse with tap water, and set aside to dry on paper towels.
 
Actually, chlorine bleach isn't the best sanitizer to use, since you have to rinse the item thoroughly after bleach treatment, and that somewhat defeats the purpose of the sanitization. Admittedly there isn't much in the way of spoilage organisms living in most North American city water supplies, but the potential to pick up something that could cause your mead to go "off" during the rinsing does exist. The no-rinse sanitizers are better, in that they don't require exposing your equipment to any unsanitized water after treatment, and additionally there is no chance of leaving any residual chlorine from any of them. Leftover chlorine, even in relatively small amounts, can influence the flavor of your mead in a bad way.
 
I'm in love with iodophor, it's ultra-cheap (concentrated bottle costs I think 10 bucks and lasts me usually half a year at least). It does stain certain plastic items that I tend to let soak in it (doesn't require soaking though, a few seconds kills everything) but that doesn't really matter.
 
I'm in love with iodophor, it's ultra-cheap (concentrated bottle costs I think 10 bucks and lasts me usually half a year at least). It does stain certain plastic items that I tend to let soak in it (doesn't require soaking though, a few seconds kills everything) but that doesn't really matter.

I second this, It's so good in fact that my wife has taken to using it with our dishes (no dishwasher). Iodophor completely rocks and is a contact sanitizer (kills on contact not in seconds or minutes)