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Sterilization what do you do?

CR

Grandmaster Brewer
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I've always used chlorine.  I like long soaks with not too much caustic.
I have a second pot of well boiled water I use for rinsing. 
It seems to work well enough.

If I were using  lots of Stainless equipment I'd not use bleach. 
I know people who curse chlorinators and insist  on using  Metasylicates (which are also strong caustics) but I rather suspect that the real  (and only) reason the modern brew house  preference is for metasilicates is simply because it does not react with the Chrome-Oxide passive layer in Stainless Steel  - which  is why SST is SST.  Lots of Chlorine can pit Stainless, stripping away the Chrome-Oxide passive layer and let rust get started.  Once you get pits, even microscopic ones, you have cleaning issues.

Any residual metasilicates will still kill the yeasts and  ruin beer.  So for me it's a 6 of one half a dozen of the other kind of decision except the bottle of Chlorox is right there in the laundry.  So the chlorine is easier.

What do you do to sterilize?

What do you rinse with?
Boiled water or tap water?



As an aside:
You can passivate your SST (re establish the chrome-oxide passive layer)  using powdered or granulated citric acid.  Using a little heat speeds the process but,  an over night soak at room temp works fine  and the titration specificity is a joke.    A couple or three cups of Citric acid powder to  five or so gallons of water is fine -  more or less.    Accuracy is that free & easy.

What's better: unlike Nitric acid (which requires exact titration, temp, and time)  you can  spill it on yourself, the floor, the counter, etc., with no more harm than vinegar would cause, and clean up is easy,  you can also  dump it down the drain when you are done and it won't rot your pipes or harm anything.

Passivation won't fill in pits tho'.








 
I clean everything with Oxyclean first, then use an acid based sanitizer and rinse with tap water......never had an infection yet.
 
Oxyclean is  laundry soap with  socium percarbonate an sodium carbonate in it.
I used to think it was soap and hydrogen peroxide.
I'm guessing you don't have any issues with residual soap.

I am considering switching to Star San.
It's cheap enough.  Al I gotta do is think about it in advance of ordering.

The "No need to rinse if used  at 300 ppm" which is 1 oz per 5 gallons is a very seductive inducement.

I'm hoping to hear people who use it in their bottles and fermentors talk about the stuff.  Is the Star San claim true?
I won't need to rinse?



 
 
Yep, StarSan is cool stuff.

Oxiclean then StarSan.

To keep a house bug from starting, every 3-5 uses I’ll add a soak in bleach solution after the Oxiclean.
 
and you use Star San in your fermenters & bottles & you don't rinse?
Tell me tell me.



 
I have actually never sterilized my brewing equipment.

I typically use Starsan to sanitize though.
 
CR said:
and you use Star San in your fermenters & bottles & you don't rinse?
Tell me tell me.

Yep, StarSan is totally no-rinse.

Just make sure whatever is totally clean first, then apply StarSan for at least 1 minute.
As a matter of fact- you don't have to soak in StarSan.
You can fill a spray bottle with the solution and spray it in fermenters and such.
Heck, you can reuse it.
I'm using the same big bottle that I bought two years ago.
 
OxyClean, sometimes with PBW mixed in.  Rinse well to rid the dirt.  Then StarSan.  StarSan is a great rinse-aid that sheets the water off the surface very well. 

I used to fill a 5-gallon carboy with StarSan until realizing that sanitizer just needs to coat the surface; it does not need to fill the vessel and sit for hours.  I now make it a gallon at a time and pour just enough into a carboy and swirl several times during the brew until ready to fill with cool wort. 

And don't rinse!  If you rinse with tap water after sanitizing, you've just re-coated your equipment with UN-sanitized water. 
 
I use Oxyclean (Yellow Top) and Starsan also. I use to use idophor and PBW, but switched after a bottling infection. I rinse well with hot water after a nice soak in oxyclean, then I spray everything (Including Carboys and Equipment) down with Starsan. I even spray Starsan into my bottles before bottling after they come out of the dishwasher's (No soap) SaniClean Cycle. I soak the bottle caps in it before capping also just for insurance.

Cheers
Preston
 
And don't rinse!  If you rinse with tap water after sanitizing, you've just re-coated your equipment with UN-sanitized water.

I've used a pot of boiled water for rinsing.  It's a PITA.  And the scorched fingers is just not fun.   Latex gloves transfer heat perfectly well.

I think I'll try Star San. I rather suspect I'll never fully abandon Chlorine but,  once the big germs are dead and rinsed away  Star San should be adequate.  

I read on one retail sales website ( I forget whose)   that the remaining Star San becomes nutrients for the yeast.
That left me scratching my head because the stuff is supposed to sanitize.  Which by my way of thinking means that it's got some thing beyond cleansing going for it.  The Star San  PDF  by Five Star Chemicals Co., says: "Broad Spectrum Bactericide and Fungicide" [...] "a unique killing system"  http://www.fivestarchemicals.com/tech/starsan.pdf  Those phrases don't sound like it'll be food for anything.

Has any  one observed a change in  PH in the a wort after it has been piped into  a fermenter cleansed with Star San?


Other sterilants:
I have used Cold Spore ( a Phenol base cold soak) and Sporcidin (a quaternary glutamide).  They are enormously effective against everything and can be  used as a spray or soak.  Cold Spore (now out of business) rinsed away very  easily.  Sporcidin was harder to  rinse away.   A case of 4 gallon jugs of  Sporcidin cost me $80.00 and you don't dilute it.  Cold Spore was a lot cheaper.  It was the exact same thing as  Chloraseptic  ( brand) oral spray.  Its was phenol base.  A case of  12-oz bottles of concentrate was like $50.00 and you could make many gallons from each bottle.













 
+1 on Star San

Charley Talley did a Basic Brewing podcast on sanitation, in that he talked at length about chlorine bleach as a sanitizer.  As I recall he said that modern chlorine bleach does not sanitize.  I think it had something to do with pH.  He talked about adding a small amount of ammonia (careful!) to bring the pH in line.  Using the concentrations he recommended, he said the solution was no rinse.

Bottom line... a chlorine bleach solution may not actually be sanitizing.  He said a lot of homebrewers get away with this because they clean their equipment so well.

Here's a link to the podcast...
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr03-29-07.mp3
 
Good point on the pH thing, but adding white vinegar to lower the pH is probably better adding ammonia.
When bleach and ammonia are mixed, chlorine gas is made.

For 5 gallons of water, I use 2 tablespoons each of bleach and vinegar.
It's best to mix the two in with water and not by themselves.

 
Good point on the danger of doing this.  It's been a while since I listened to it so maybe he was talking about vinegar, I'm not certain.

It does seem like he recommended ammonia though and was very clear about the dangers and about how much to use and how to do it safely.




ChuckE said:
Good point on the pH thing, but adding white vinegar to lower the pH is probably better adding ammonia.
When bleach and ammonia are mixed, chlorine gas is made.

For 5 gallons of water, I use 2 tablespoons each of bleach and vinegar.
It's best to mix the two in with water and not by themselves.
 
ChuckE said:
Good point on the pH thing, but adding white vinegar to lower the pH is probably better adding ammonia.
When bleach and ammonia are mixed, chlorine gas is made.

For 5 gallons of water, I use 2 tablespoons each of bleach and vinegar.
It's best to mix the two in with water and not by themselves.

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/star-san.html

No vinegar (acetic?), chlorine (chlorophenols?), ammonia (band-aid?), chlorine gas or risk of death involved. 

True no-rinse, easy-to-use, and easy-to-mix at one tsp per gallon in a plastic water jug.  Stores well.  Won't pit stainless steel.  Sanitizes glass, stainless, and plastic.  No heat required.  Won't burn your fingers.  What's not to love? 

 
Iodophor for CIP stuff, pumps, counterflow (internal) chiller, for all things non-foaming...  I use it on just about everything that I don't care about staining too...

Star-san for fermenters, corny kegs, misc small parts (keg posts, etc.) - things that need "bulk space filled with foam" - 1 gallon shaken up works GREAT!
 
Also.... this is semantics, but most (all?) of us are sanitizing not sterilizing.
 
sounds like a winner.
I'm buying a bottle.

 
I just play the guitar for about 5 minutes at which point all life forms have left the immediate vicinity --- if I need to sterilize then I sing while playing
 
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