Comment by ratelimitsteve
9 days ago
I can't speak to the sodium based chemicals but as a homebrewer I use potassium metabisulfite (aka campdeb tablets or k-meta) in multiple steps of the brewing process and it has an ld50 in rats of over 2g/kg. It also allows for microbial growth again about 24 hours after being applied, and usually the first step to brewing from juice is to bop it with k-meta, wait a day and then add yeast. Then the last step (if you want to sweeten the wine) is to use even more k-meta to stun the existing yeast and potassium sulfate to stabilize. Because this also depends on cultivating a select flora I feel like a similar process would yield similar results without the risk of overdose in anything we'd like to preserve.
I missed this, but this is great information! Thank you.
I've learned this in an aquaria context where killing the bacterial coating in a tank is a bit of a disaster, and fish tend to be quite sensitive so it could be very risky to use potassium metabisulfite. But what you're detailing here is really interesting. I've used it in brewing before, but it was part of a kit and I didn't really understand it beyond basic mechanics. It's a lot more interesting than I realized!