homebrewandbeer.com

I am a K&K brewer, and am just about to venture into boiling the malt and other fermentables. I am keen to try the Hoegarden clone.

My question is this: do I need a stainless steel pot to boil in or will an aluminium pan do the trick.

I personally wouldnt use a pan but an ally pot is just fine, i use stainless ( 19 litre) for my smaller brews and now to heat water for my AGs and use a 40 litre ally for boiling the wort, they are both great except when i bought my 40 litre i couldnt get hold of a stainless one and the allys are about a third of the price

There was a time when aluminium was linked to Alzheimer's disease. This has been comprehensively discounted. There are no known health effects from using aluminium cookware.

Aluminium oxide, which coats all aluminium very quickly upon exposure to air, is (strangely) about as hard as ruby and about as reactive.

Unless you are really shoddy with your cleaning, there is no material benefit to stainless. It is prettier though.

I have an ally and a stainless, I think the stainless is better only because of its thick base.

I've never had a problem with aluminium pots for brewing.

Coffee percolators are a different story ... (coffee can be very corrosive)

SS is better in my opinion, as (1) the base holds the heat nicely, and (2) they last forever. You never need to replace them if you look after them.

I do a fair bit of rockclimbing and bushwalking where getting water to boil as fast as possible is important as to save fuel/weight/energy/time.

Aluminum will heat up faster and also absorb more of the heat than stainless or titanium. However this might not be good qualities for heating wort/beer in...

If you're drilling holes in your pot, aluminum is a lot easier to work with.

Stainless still looks cooler and probably heats more evenly tho...

SpillsMostOfIt wrote:There was a time when aluminium was linked to Alzheimer's disease. This has been comprehensively discounted. There are no known health effects from using aluminium cookware.

Aluminium oxide, which coats all aluminium very quickly upon exposure to air, is (strangely) about as hard as ruby and about as reactive.

Unless you are really shoddy with your cleaning, there is no material benefit to stainless. It is prettier though.

Sorry mate, have to disagree with you there....

The health risks of aluminum is quite well accepted.
No,it doesn't cause alzheimers directly, but it will lead to certain blockages of mineral absorption, which are linked to development of alzheimers (minerals like Magnesium, for example).

I would strongly urge people to stop cooking in aluminium. Stainless steel is better.

...and check your deoderant. Most are Al-based.

I was going to say that is bullshit..................but I can't remember why!

Time to hit the Mg tablets

... and stop eating food. The vast majority of the average human's aluminium intake is from food - remember that it is a fairly abundant element in this part of the galaxy.

I cannot find a *recent* *scientific* study that is anti-aluminium.

Just in case, what should I use to make my replacement hat out of?

A collinder, coathangers and COPPER foil.

This is like the old philosophy: everything gives you cancer- deal with it.

I think you're right, Chris. I was going to leave my previous post alone, then decided to take a different tack.

Access Economics were engaged by Alzheimers Australia to work up some predictions for dementia incidence in Australia through to 2051.

The paper is here -> http://www.alzheimers.org.au/upload/Est ... tional.pdf

They based their figures on an Australia-wide incidence of 0.8% of the population currently suffering dementia - to which Alzheimer's disease contributes. Alzheimer was the doctor who first described it - I don't know if he actually contracted it.

My chances of dying of alcohol-related (or caused) diseases are greater than my chances of contracting Alzheimers. I am not about to give up drinking, so why should I worry about Alzheimers - even if I can be convinced that my aluminium boiler contributes?

I mean no offence to anyone, but you gotta die of something and hopefully you will die old with all your faculties and in your sleep, but chances are you will not.

I got half way through this thread and forgot what it was about

Actually Tipsy, it is surprisingly still on topic. The topic being the relative merits of Stainless steel over aluminum that spun along the Al gives you Alzheimer's question.

Cheers,
Greg

Just to clarify....

Aluminium intake will not cause Alzheimers!

Alzheimers comes about because of a series of nutritional deficiencies.

Too much intake of Aluminum blocks the absorption of certain minerals/etc thus causing those deficiencies. There are other ways (other than aluminium) that can cause these same deficiencies. And my understanding is that this combined with some other factors creates the tipping point that leads to Alzheimers.

You could eat out of aluminum pots all your life and nothing will happen - this is because those other factors aren't there - perhaps you have an exceptionally robust constitution, perhaps you get plenty of other nutrients from other surces (food, supplementation, etc); etc etc. I'm not into naturopathics so I can't give you details of all this - thats my partner. We have a completely different understanding about these things in Chinese Med, and I'm not really wanting to go into that here....

And yes, of course we're all going to die of something. However, good physical health is related to good mental and emotional health too. I'd rather die happy and old, than young and miserable.

Even if you disagree with all of this, Stainless Steel is better to cook in than Aluminum - ask any chef!

Oh, and just to throw in a wuickie on scientific research....

One can get any justification for any argument from scientific research - its based on the parameters set for research. This inherent bias is understood in the realms of Quantum Physics and Heisenberg's 'Uncertainty Principle'.

In terms of real evidence - if you see it for yourself, then its true! This is the way everyone else in the world works. Clinical evidence (in medical context) is always more true than 'research evidence'. How many times do Doctors ignore the subjective feelings of their patients because 'the tests show nothing abnormal'?! Perhaps scientists/doctors/researchers should start listening to people, instead of talking down to them and assuming they know nothing about their own selves!

Let me put it another way. You brew a beer, and you love the taste! Awesome. And then some professional brewing chemist from a large brewery comes along, looks at your recipe, your equipment, and the kitchen/shed you made it in and says that there is no way your beer could taste good because it did nto conform to known data on brewing beer, blah blah blah.... You've tasted it! You know its good! Your mates know its good! But here is someone who hasn't tasted it but i basing his opinions on numbers on a spreadsheet. The 'pro' brewer is a research scientist; the homebrewer is the patient. Who is right?

This is the kind of block that comes up with any opinion or clinical evidence in medicine all the time - the researchers, scientists, and Doctors who depend on all this 'data' are blind to the realities of the clinic.

True story: my grandmother went to hospital once, and the doctors and nurses couldn't find her pulse! They continually would say, "you have no pulse". My grandmother continued to reply, "But I'm sitting here talking to you! I'm alive, breathing and sentient. How can I have no pulse?!" According to their training, she should have been dead. But she wasn't. And at no time, did they try to palpate her to feel her pulse - they were dependent on all the machines that go "bing". A rediculous, but true example of the idiocy present in the medical world.

Have I ranted enough..... sorry; its just that I'm quite passionate about this....

From Alzheimer Scotland:

"3. Pots and pans
The aluminium added to most foods by cooking in uncoated aluminium pans is less than 0.1mg per 100 gram serving. But the acid in some foods can increase the amount of aluminium in food picks up from uncoated aluminium pans.

Rhubarb cooked in an uncoated aluminium pan or pressure cooker can, for example, pick up 4mg of aluminium per 100g serving. Adding sugar can halve the amount of aluminium dissolved. If you want to reduce your aluminium intake from cookware, you could avoid cooking acidic foods (most fruits, including tomatoes) in uncoated aluminium pans.

Cooking food in coated/non-stick or hard-anodised aluminium pans adds virtually no aluminium. Coated or non-stick pans are easy to distinguish from uncoated pans. Hard-anodised aluminium pans are steely grey or black.

It is best not to clean uncoated aluminium pans with cleaning soda or bleach. These strip away the surface of pans, leaving newly exposed metal, which is more likely to dissolve into food. Acidic food stored in uncoated aluminium cookware can also accumulate aluminium.

Recent reports suggesting that fluoride in water increases the aluminium dissolved from cooking utensils have been disproved."

http://www.alzscot.org/pages/info/aluminium.htm

& http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/water-e ... ium_e.html

"Should I stop using aluminum cookware and aluminum foil?

No. Studies have shown that the amount of aluminum that leaches from aluminum cookware and aluminum foil into food is generally negligible."


From my short search I'd be concerned about ingesting large quantities. &I'd be more concerned about aluminium intake from water rather than cookware.

dragonphoenix73 wrote:Oh, and just to throw in a wuickie on scientific research....

One can get any justification for any argument from scientific research - its based on the parameters set for research. This inherent bias is understood in the realms of Quantum Physics and Heisenberg's 'Uncertainty Principle'.

In terms of real evidence - if you see it for yourself, then its true! This is the way everyone else in the world works. Clinical evidence (in medical context) is always more true than 'research evidence'. How many times do Doctors ignore the subjective feelings of their patients because 'the tests show nothing abnormal'?! Perhaps scientists/doctors/researchers should start listening to people, instead of talking down to them and assuming they know nothing about their own selves!
this....

LOL so in essence your saying ignore scientific method, cos gut feel is more accurate! Any doctor who provides advice based on his own clinical evidence in front of trial evidence will not only be sued foirthwith, but very likely struck off when the inevitable bad outcome comes a long.

The fundamental difference between alternative quackery and medicine is the application of the scientific method and evidence based medicine - anyone who upon been diagnosed with a tumour, who would prefer to go and see their irridologist or Traditional Practitioner before their surgeon and oncologist, should not use any aluminium. All those that demand some amount of evidence and scietific based practice, would do well to head all well regarded research in this field which says cooking in aluminium has no measureable downside.

Any peer reviewed paper from a reputeable scientific journal that says otherwise will glady be read with interest!