Diy bac water confusion?

[Bep2030]

Hey all!

I have been reading up on diy bac water, and there is one thing I cannot get my head around. A few people on this forum say they mix up a big batch of bac water themselves and then decant it into smaller sterile vials. Plenty also say those vials keep for a long time.

What I cannot work out is this: does the shelf life not really begin the moment those smaller vials are opened, filled and the rubber stopper gets pierced? By then the original sterile seal is gone.

I would be curious how other people look at this, and how they settle on a shelf life for the vials once filled

 

[kazza94x]

Bep2030 said:

Hey all!

I have been reading up on diy bac water, and there is one thing I cannot get my head around. A few people on this forum say they mix up a big batch of bac water themselves and then decant it into smaller sterile vials. Plenty also say those vials keep for a long time.

What I cannot work out is this: does the shelf life not really begin the moment those smaller vials are opened, filled and the rubber stopper gets pierced? By then the original sterile seal is gone.

I would be curious how other people look at this, and how they settle on a shelf life for the vials once filled

Making your own bac water is not something I would advise, unless you have a sterile lab and all the kit that goes with it. The clock on the "shelf" life starts the moment you mix the bacteriostatic water, put it into a vial and seal it. Piercing that vial is what starts the "28 days" recommended life span. Some people have gone as long as 3 months past piercing, but 28 days is the figure that guarantees minimal to no bacterial growth.

 

[tubby]

Bep2030 said:

Hey all!

I have been reading up on diy bac water, and there is one thing I cannot get my head around. A few people on this forum say they mix up a big batch of bac water themselves and then decant it into smaller sterile vials. Plenty also say those vials keep for a long time.

What I cannot work out is this: does the shelf life not really begin the moment those smaller vials are opened, filled and the rubber stopper gets pierced? By then the original sterile seal is gone.

I would be curious how other people look at this, and how they settle on a shelf life for the vials once filled

Most of the time -- not always -- sterility is not the main thing to worry about as BAC water gets older. Remember that what separates BAC water from sterile water is the added substance that holds bacterial growth down. For instance, you will not find a bacterial colony growing in old BAC water, because there is simply no food in there for them to chow down on (bar bacteria that can metabolize benzyl alcohol). The way mammals do not thrive on Mars (no food, no oxygen and so on), most bacteria will not thrive in BAC water. That equation clearly shifts a little once the BAC water goes into a lyophilized puck, which has plenty of tasty food in it for any bacteria around to gobble up, but that is not what you asked about.

What matters most is benzyl alcohol degrading. As its concentration falls, it both loses its grip on bacterial growth and the amount of things your body may not care for (benzaldehyde, say) climbs. Seen a certain way, that can make sterile water the better pick at times, since there is no benzyl alcohol to degrade, though the pros and cons list there is far messier.

With DIY BAC water the larger worry is that you have no real control over whatever else is in that water that your body may not care for, since you have neither the kit to purify water to the standard you would want nor the kit to move the product into vials without something else tagging along for the ride. And if you do have sterile water on hand that has been properly depyrogenated, mixing it with benzyl alcohol you picked up in bulk somewhere seems a curious choice, rather than simply accepting that you are working with sterile water and using smaller individual vials.

For me it comes down to this: if you can buy properly made BAC water commercially for under $100 (or thereabouts), it is likely to beat whatever homebrew process you come up with. And if for some reason BAC water or sterile water for injection is not obtainable and you are forced to reinvent the wheel, would it not make more sense to try and emulate sterile water rather than BAC water? Not that I recommend either, only that the first is a lower order of complexity.

 

[Vuja]

Hi there,

I have 500 ml of sterile water for injection here.

Into the bottle I added 5 ml of benzyl alcohol, and the alcohol does not seem to be dissolving well in the water.

Has anyone else run into this?

The water is not completely clear.

I moved the 5 ml across with a syringe, so contamination cannot have happened.