Are Opened Packs of Sugar Pellets a Contamination Risk

[hundel]

For some styles I’ve taken to bottling directly from the fermenter using Coopers carbonating pellets. The biggest change for me is without the bottling bucket I’m no longer able to boil my carbonating sugar. The Coopers come in bags of pellets about twice my batch size.

I understand a freshly opened bag of carbonating sugar pellets placed in bottles after dipping your hand in StarSan poses little or no contamination risk.

Does using the left over pellets from a previously opened bag of Coopers carbonating pellets (or equivalent) in subsequent brews present a significant risk of contamination when added directly to sanitized bottles?

 

[Yooper]

No- sugar isn’t a hospitable environment for microbes to grow.

 

[hundel]

Thanks Yooper. Remarkably there doesn’t seem to be a lot of clear answers to this in my books or online. Hopefully this will get indexed by search engines for others. I pride myself in a very long run of clean batches. My gut told me that while hoppy beer is pretty resilient to new microbes, I’d better use caution. The reassurance that others are doing this without contamination is helpful.

 

[Silver_Is_Money]

I've used Domino Dots sugar cubes straight from the (more often than not, previously opened) box for 4 years now without issues. 2.291 grams of table sugar per cube per the package, and 2.32 grams per cube per my scale. Works well for 12 ounce size bottles.

 

[Nosybear]

For some styles I’ve taken to bottling directly from the fermenter using Coopers carbonating pellets. The biggest change for me is without the bottling bucket I’m no longer able to boil my carbonating sugar. The Coopers come in bags of pellets about twice my batch size.

I understand a freshly opened bag of carbonating sugar pellets placed in bottles after dipping your hand in StarSan poses little or no contamination risk.

Does using the left over pellets from a previously opened bag of Coopers carbonating pellets (or equivalent) in subsequent brews present a significant risk of contamination when added directly to sanitized bottles?

As Yooper suggests, pure sugar is not hospitable to microbes. Of concern would be any dust or spores that could settle out on them. As long as you keep them sealed with as much air as possible removed, you should be fine.