Sanitizing

[SaladDaze]

Hi all,

Getting back into home brewing after a few years on hiatus. I can't seem to remember the proper way to sanitize my equipment.

In the last month I've brewed a couple small batches of cider and my process is to rinse with a sani-brew mixture then rinse thoroughly with tap water. This has seemed to work fine.

I'm a little worried about contamination from the tap water, any suggestions before I commit to investing in a 23L batch?

Cheers!

-Salad

 

[MaxStout]

Using a sanitizer doesn't do much good, if you follow by rinsing with tap water. The tap water may not be sanitary. Use a no-rinse sanitizer, like Starsan.

 

[Catoshy]

Since I'm very cheap, I use bleach and then rinse with water. I don't think this is the best practice but I'm poor as a very poor person and it doesn't seem like a big deal to me, and my water is free from microbes since it still has a lot of chlorine when it makes it to my house. I will say that it is a pain and I would use no rinse sanitizers if I could.

 

[Renegade Brewer]

Star San is pretty cheap when you compare it to lost product and time due to poor sanitation or pitted stainless due to the use of bleach.

Use the right tool for the job and invest in a 4oz bottle of star San for 7.00.

This kind of reminds me of the customers who walk in my shop and say they don’t want to use an actual sacramyces or proper ingredients because bread yeast and feed corn from the farm supply store is much cheaper. I honestly can’t help these people if they choose not to invest in the hobby. Poor practices, port ingredients, and poor technique will only end in poor product.

I ask the same question I ask the distillers who come in and want to use grandpa’s prohibition recipes: do you want to make something that just gets you lit or do you want to make something that would fetch 200.00 off the shelf?

Sorry to be harsh, but sometimes this hobby is not in everyone’s budget and I’d rather see you save your money and find something you’d rather invest in than waste money and get frustrated with the hobby

 

[Catoshy]

Thanks for the tip, never thought of it as a big deal when i was happy so long as it killed the bugs.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

Simple,cheap,proven works.

Fill your fermenter with warm water, add a scoop of Oxyclean free. Stick all you little stuff in the fermenter and let it soak for the brew session (4 hours) or overnight. Rinse real good with tap water...IF you remember and half the time I don't spritz everything with starsan for good measure before racking

I've killed some nasty stuff in the fermenter this way and still using the same buckets....so to those that say Oxyclean is not a sanitizer...I say hogwash...and if it isn't it kills every nasty thing homebrew related so whats the difference

 

[Renegade Brewer]

The difference being oxyclean or PBW (both being similar in oxygen activated cleaners) will not kill 99.9% of bacteria, therefore it can’t be deemed a sanitizer. I would challenge you to plate both samples, one slide with a scape from equipment cleaned with oxyclean on agar and the other on a slide of agar that was sanitized using iostar or star San and count note the bacterial growth on each slide. I do this experiment in our lab almost daily for QA before product goes to the brite tank to ensure ppm of rogue microbes is below our allowed threshold.

A sanitizer will kill microbes where a cleaner breaks down organic matter and removes debris. I’d suggest submitting your beer into a BJCP event and have it judged by a panel trained to detect off flavors and see if your score sheet reflects a beer that has no off flavors due to a rogue microbe.

 

[beerlover77]

Use Oxyclean or PBW to clean your equipment. Use star-san right before use to sanitize.

BTW sanitizing does not kill ALL bacteria... Sterilizing does. Sanitizing kills/limits bacteria to an acceptable level where they should do no harm.

 

[Keepcalm]

I'm fairly new to brewing but been using star san with out any issues.

I use 6 gallon food grad safe bucket i got at lowes. Fill it with 5 gallons of wateri and 1oz star san and mix. I then dump it into my car boy then back into the buck where I sanitize all my equipment.

I don't rinse or worry about the foam

I probbably waste alot of good star san this way but it works for me.

 

[Renegade Brewer]

Beerlover is 100% correct which is why the FDA would not allow Five Star Chemicals to call star San a sterilizing agent. However, if you look at what star San does to a microbe under a microscope it’s pretty phenomenal. It literally explodes the cell like a little mini nuke just went off.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

The difference being oxyclean or PBW (both being similar in oxygen activated cleaners) will not kill 99.9% of bacteria, therefore it can’t be deemed a sanitizer. I would challenge you to plate both samples, one slide with a scape from equipment cleaned with oxyclean on agar and the other on a slide of agar that was sanitized using iostar or star San and count note the bacterial growth on each slide. I do this experiment in our lab almost daily for QA before product goes to the brite tank to ensure ppm of rogue microbes is below our allowed threshold.

A sanitizer will kill microbes where a cleaner breaks down organic matter and removes debris. I’d suggest submitting your beer into a BJCP event and have it judged by a panel trained to detect off flavors and see if your score sheet reflects a beer that has no off flavors due to a rogue microbe.

This makes me laugh a bit. Myself and just about all home brewers only plate a juicy steak. I'm not seeing many "plating on agar" I would have zero issues submitting 10 beers to any judge anywhere and have them tell me which one was cleaned with Oxyclean and which was cleaned with StarSan. I'm 1000% confident it would be nothing but a complete waste of time. It would be a good test for Brulosphy. And being I've been using the same fermenters for years without infection I'm quite sure I'm not afraid of a "rouge microbe" LOL. That's great that you have a lab though.

You also mentioned on another post you have the king of all homebrew shops in CA.
Whats it called and where is it located?
I have beer drinkin family in CA and if its close maybe they could stop in.

 

[Renegade Brewer]

Food grade bucket from Lowe’s? I’m skeptical being that I’ve never seen a food grade bucket sold at Lowe’s. If it’s the typical blue bucket found at the end of each aisle, that’s not even close to food grade.

As for wasted sanitizer, so long as star San’s PH doesn’t change it is still effective. You could seal your bucket of sanitizer and be okay for at least a few days. I keep a few spray bottles of star San in the brewery for up to a couple weeks.

 

[Renegade Brewer]

Johnny I know quite a few home brewers mostly in the Bay Area who operate in a clean room environment, professional grade nano systems, and who regularly plate samples due to culturing yeast strains. While this is not the case for the majority of homebrewers, it is common amongst those who strive to win NHC comp, BJCP comp, or later become professional brewers. With the equipment made available to homebrewers that we use on the commercial side we are seeing more and more homebrewers advance into this category.

I’m sure you’re making good beer, but we have to keep in mind that good is subjective. Those around us we share our beer with will almost always say, “hey! That’s really good!” Of course it is, it’s free beer. To be absolutely sure we are making not only good, but great beer we should have it tasted and judged by as many impartial parties as possible.

As for the “king of all homebrew shops” hardly. We have a humble, yet well stocked and very knowledgeable staff with rotating taps, but we are no InBev owned conglomerate. We actually take pride in modeling ourselves after More Beer and being a humble version of that great shop but just outside the Bay Area. The name of the shop is Renegade Brewing Supplies. I welcome you if you are ever in the area. Please come by and have a beer with us. We have many regular customers who enjoy sitting around the table drinking and sharing beer and tossing beer related info around. I’d love it if you came by and met our regular brewers. It’s our customers who make us the great shop we are. We learn so much from our customers, many of whom are pro brewers or on their way to being pro just going through the ABC headaches have a ton of info to share in an open forum environment.

 

[helibrewer]

In our brewery we sanitize with heat. I do the same at home with my fermenter and brite tank. I use my RIMs to circulate 170F water through the spray ball for 30 minutes. For small parts I use StarSan. Cleaning is done with a Oxy/TSP mix or a 2% Caustic/TSP mix.

@Catoshy -- Having chlorine in your brewing water is a BAD thing

 

[Keepcalm]

Food grade bucket from Lowe’s? I’m skeptical being that I’ve never seen a food grade bucket sold at Lowe’s. If it’s the typical blue bucket found at the end of each aisle, that’s not even close to food grade.

You are correct I got it at Home Depot.
I think it was in the paint aisle. It's a white bucket saying it's food grade.

I rarely go to Home Depot.

 

[Calder]

Since I'm very cheap, I use bleach and then rinse with water. I don't think this is the best practice but I'm poor as a very poor person and it doesn't seem like a big deal to me, and my water is free from microbes since it still has a lot of chlorine when it makes it to my house. I will say that it is a pain and I would use no rinse sanitizers if I could.

I keep bleach in my fermenters when unused, and my hoses in a bucket of bleach. So easy to just toss rinsed equipment into a bucket of bleach and remove it a couple of week later when needed. Rinse with hot water a few times and it's ready to go. I partial boil, and my make-up water comes out of the tap, never had any issues, so I don't see a problem with just rinsing with hot tap water. Rinse water needs to be hot; cold water will not fully remove bleach and leave a film on the surface.

For bottles and caps and everyday use, I keep a gallon of Starsan on the side. I generally use it for several months before tossing and replacing. With Starsan, it is 30 seconds contact time and no-rinse; a lot easier than bleach solution. Since you can reuse StarSan many times, it is not only easier to use than bleach for small items, it is also cheaper. Just make sure things are clean that you use it on. I would recommend investment in an 8 ozs bottle and just keep a little of it made up for everyday use.

 

[beerlover77]

Although I don't judge others for using bleach, I avoid it and here is why:
-Bleach is a disinfectant and not a cleaner. It is also bad for SS.
-I also make wine. If you make wine and bleach gets in the winery it will ruin it

 

[S-Met]

You are correct I got it at Home Depot.
I think it was in the paint aisle. It's a white bucket saying it's food grade.

I rarely go to Home Depot.

Both HD and Lowe's carry the white food-grade buckets in 5gal and sometimes 1&2gal size. I dont trust that they are scratch free though. I use them for brining, large batch lacto-ferments (kraut, kimchi) and for sani/cleaning buckets. Not for beer or ciders though.

 

[ThePaleAleIndian]

Hi all,

Getting back into home brewing after a few years on hiatus. I can't seem to remember the proper way to sanitize my equipment.

In the last month I've brewed a couple small batches of cider and my process is to rinse with a sani-brew mixture then rinse thoroughly with tap water. This has seemed to work fine.

I'm a little worried about contamination from the tap water, any suggestions before I commit to investing in a 23L batch?

Cheers!

-Salad

I use various sanitizers at various stages of my process (NEVER combine sanitizers, doing so could release toxic gases). But a no-rinse sanitizer is always the last one. Rinsing with tap water is actually recommended in at least one of the older homebrewing texts. But personally I wouldn't risk it. If I'm ever really concerned about residual sanitizer i might consider rinsing with boiled and cooled tap water. But that sounds like a real PITA, and there are enough no-rinse sanitizers out there that this concern can be easily circumvented. I would recommend looking into Star San.

 

[darkrabbit]

The way I do it, and from everything I've researched it's a good way, is to use a sanitizer like Star San in a spray bottle. I don't dump 1oz of Star San into a 5gal bucket like I used to do, it's a waste. Especially with tap water because Star San is only good until it's cloudy and it will be cloudy in 2-3 days after being in tap water. $7 for a bottle of Star San, $1 for a gallon of distilled water, add 1/4 oz of Star San to 1Gal distilled water, mix, have 1-2 spray bottles, dump the mix into the spray bottles, save the rest, in glass jars if you can. On a brew day I am extremely diligent with sanitizing and I never need more than my spray bottle. I use about 1/4 - 1/3 of the bottle.

There's no need to soak anything in star san. Just spray it. To paint something green you don't sit it in the green paint bucket. Star san will kill bacteria in very low concentration. Do NOT rinse! You'll defeat the purpose of using the sanitizer.

The only time I use star san and tap water is when I am rinsing kegs and I am going to dump it anyway. I fill the keg with 1 gal of water with 1/4 oz star san and shake the keg, then dump it.

Hope this helps.

 

[Calder]

Especially with tap water because Star San is only good until it's cloudy and it will be cloudy in 2-3 days after being in tap water.

This is just not true. Cloudy StarSan is not an indicator that it is no good.

 

[darkrabbit]

This is just not true. Cloudy StarSan is not an indicator that it is no good.

You’re right. My mistake. I did some checking afterwards and the threads I read said it was however many others said as long as the pH is below 3 you’re okay.

But using distilled water will allow it to last a lot longer so I’m still glad I switched to that

 

[allanyork]

Hey what about aseptox? Would you consider that as a sanitizer? Or just a cleaner. Thanks.

The difference being oxyclean or PBW (both being similar in oxygen activated cleaners) will not kill 99.9% of bacteria, therefore it can’t be deemed a sanitizer. I would challenge you to plate both samples, one slide with a scape from equipment cleaned with oxyclean on agar and the other on a slide of agar that was sanitized using iostar or star San and count note the bacterial growth on each slide. I do this experiment in our lab almost daily for QA before product goes to the brite tank to ensure ppm of rogue microbes is below our allowed threshold.

A sanitizer will kill microbes where a cleaner breaks down organic matter and removes debris. I’d suggest submitting your beer into a BJCP event and have it judged by a panel trained to detect off flavors and see if your score sheet reflects a beer that has no off flavors due to a rogue microbe.

 

[65C]

Sanitisation is over exaggerated

Just make sure the ferment kit is clean - give it all a bit of starsan

I watch some YT videos of people spraying and washing everything like they might get some STD

You've got to seriously mess up to overwhelm a good dose of brewing yeast

The real risks are late additions (like fruit), something obviously sketchy like a dirty blowoff pipe sucking water back or letting wort sit open at room temp to rack in morning as you drunk too much during the boil

 

[vcorbett]

There's alot of complicated replys here. But basically the keg and anything that touches inside must be clean. I sanitize mine with a wee dash of bleach, then make sure it's washed out with tap water. I then use bottled water to fill as tap water here can taint beer.