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Sanitation

JohnnyMac

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I have a 15 gallon Blichmann conical fermentor. I carefully clean it then fill with a starsan solution. Is it necessary to fill with a starsan solution after cleaning or would a contact cleaner be sufficient ? Would save a lot of water.
 
Cleaning removes most of the old dried on yeast, beer, trub, etc., but it doesn't get rid of bacteria, wild yeasts or other microscopic contamination. Cleaning only isn't good enough.  Clean and sanitize. Sanitizing will get rid of almost all of the rest of the microscopic organisms.  You can't sanitize, unless you first clean though.

You're goal is to give your chosen yeast variety the advantage.  When we pitch billions of cells of our chosen yeast, we want them to be competing with the smallest quantity of wild yeasts and bacterias as possible.  There is no such thing as sterile wort in the homebrew environment, so our goal should be to give our chosen yeast the best chance to compete against the other stuff.
 
A thorough clean with an alkali cleaner like PBW in a hot water solution is priority one, followed by a rinse with the same temperature water, but you don't have to fill and soak it with a starsan solution, its a waste of starsan and water.  I used to do it too.  Just use a spray bottle of starsan to thoroughly coat the surfaces. 
 
Scott's right that complete cleaning, then proper sanitizing is the key.

From my experience, starsan is a contact sanitizer.  I don't have something as large as 15 gal (ie. 3 and 5 gal), but I mix up the proper proportions of starsan and water, say a gallon, then pour half of it into the target container and swish it around to cover all surfaces.  I let it sit for a couple of minutes and swish it around again them empty it back to the gallon jug as long as it doesn't have any dirt in it.  I do the same to sanitize my bottles after rinsing. 

You can reuse this solution as long as the PH is under 3.  I use PH test strips to check this.  When it gets close to 3 I will discard it or use it in my blow off tube bucket if I'm brewing.  I've also heard that you can use a spray bottle to coat all surfaces to sanitize as long as you coat thoroughly.  Sorry KernelCrush.  Didn't mean to step on you.
 
You didn't.  Good advice Tex.  Since you brought up the starsan in a blowoff bucket, why do you suppose we need to do that, since we are told bugs cant crawl, only fall. 
 
I have no idea...  Guess I will have to fall back on another saying of my generation...  Better safe than sorry.
 
I use the cheap unyielding vinyl tubing for blowoff, and if I don't arch it just right on the frig ceiling it has slipped out of the bucket before, maybe for days, without me noticing it with no ill effects.  Just wondering.
 
Complete cleaning with Oxyclean then spraying with a starsan solution.
Is that OK ?
 
I use a hot water mix of 4.5 cups unscented Oxyclean with 2 cups TSP, rinse well with hot water, spray with starsan, air dry.
 
I like oxyclean for cleaning too. a good soak in hot solution and no scrubbing required. Just don't use the last scoop from the laundry shelf or you'll never hear the end of it. I ended up having to buy my own box and keep it with the brewing supplies. Now I'm just waiting for her to run out in the laundry room and come begging. Muhahahaha!!
 
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