To sanitize or not, is there a compromise?

[Sudz]

Good discussion on an important subject...

Some of my buddies and I were kicking this subject around and a specific area came up for which none of us had an answer.

Assume for the moment that the rule of "nothing touches the wine which hasn't been sanitized" is valid and practiced by most specifically after fermentation. Our debate was surrounding the use of your fingers in managing things which utilized sanitized implements.

Is a hand considered sanitary if it has been in a sanitizing solution? Are you placing your wine at risk if you grab something which is associated with the wine? Obviously a bare hand would be a infection risk, but what about one that's been sanitized?

What say ye?

 

[Bartman]

Well, I would say this is getting a little overzealous, since you could also consider airborne germs (yeast, bacteria, etc.) to be floating around constantly as well. But being reasonable, a sanitized hand stays sanitized until it touches something that has not been sanitized. And 'sanitizing' your hand is the best you can do, since the means of sterilizing at home (boiling, burning or chemical agents like Clorox) are not something you want to do to your bare hands.

As an academic discussion, I'd say a sanitized bare hand is safe to touch your equipment with as long as your hand touches no un-sanitized surfaces (countertops, plumbing fixtures, your pant leg, etc.).