Bleach as a sanitiser.

[stevebea]

Hi and thanks for letting me join.
Please forgive my lack of knowledge as i have just started my first cider kit.
I sanitised with Jsan but found soaking everything for 30 minutes a bit of a pain.
Has anyone any thoughts on the bleach and vinegar no rinse method and do you have to let everything dry before using.
Many thanks in advance.
Steve

 

[kelper]

Any sanitiser needs some time to work. I fill my fermentation bucket and add some *Fred n Flo tablets normally used for sanitising baby bottles. Into the bucket goes the siphon, some swing top bottles the measuring cylinder and hydrometer along with the lid and any other bits n pieces. After 15 minutes I pump the liquid into my pressure barrel. The first lot gets a quick rinse and then I start brewing. While I wait, I am heating the cans of extract in a sink of hot water. So there's little or no hanging around once you have a routine.

* https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/302169753 a pack of 56 for 75p. Will treat 2.3 litres per tab.

You can use household bleach IF it's non-perfumed AND non-thickened.

 

[Clint]

Get some star San..

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Get some star San..

Is there any left?

 

[An Ankoù]

Bleach is the best sanitiser there is. Don't waste your money on Starsan or carbonation drops.

 

[Rodcx500z]

Bleach is the best sanitiser there is. Don't waste your money on Starsan or carbonation drops.

Agree An on the bleach, I use 79p per liter Milton rip off and t&t sugar cubes not had a bad batch yet

 

[Frogbrew]

Milton rip-off for me too, works a treat.

 

[strange-steve]

Bleach is the best sanitiser there is. Don't waste your money on Starsan or carbonation drops.

I suppose it depends on what is meant by "best". Yes bleach will do a better job of killing bacteria, wild yeast, mould, spores etc. but it requires longer contact time and needs rinsing off afterwards. Starsan isn't a disinfectant so is less effective, but its sanitising power is good enough for our purposes, requires very little contact time, is no-rinse and so generally much easier to use.

 

[An Ankoù]

I must say, to be fair, that I've never used Star San. On the other hand, I have used Five Star Beer Stone (BS) Remover and it categorically doesn't work. I tried the suggested dilution and worked up to full strength. hardly a mark.
I then tried supermarket strength hydrochloric acid and that didn't make much of a mark, either. In truth I didn't expect it to. Undiluted bleach seemed to work a little better, but not much and I'm now in the process of superannuating my ancient Hop and Grape Seven Gallon buckets in favour of Speidel fermenters. My point being, that if one product from this bunch of snake oil vendors doesn't work then I'm not going to waste my dosh trying another one.

 

[PhilBrew]

Hi Steve

Has anyone any thoughts on the bleach and vinegar no rinse method and do you have to let everything dry before using

... I use a very weak bleach and vinegar mixture as a no rinse sanitiser, following the "recipe" that Charlie Talley (the guy who invented StarSan) described on a Brewing Network radio podcast a while ago ... I've only used it on bottles, because like kelper explains above once you've got a routine it's not too arduous to rinse ... so everything else gets a soak in stronger (but still weak, 10-15ml per ltr) bleach solution, then rinsed before use ... but bottling is arduous enough without having to rinse steriliser out of bottles

The Charlie Talley "recipe" equates to (he explained it in US fl.oz. and US gals) 1.5 mls of bleach, mixed in 1 ltr of water, then 1.5mls distilled (white) vinegar added ... NEVER mix the bleach and vinegar together directly, that's how you make chlorine gas, which is poisonous, always mix in water!!!!!! ... but you need to bear in mind that he was talking about bleach at 5% hypochlorite, and Tesco/Asda/Morrison's Value Thin Bleaches vary from 3.5-1.0% hypochlorite, so read the label and calculate the correct amount ... and for the mix to be effective, it relies on lowering the pH of the mixture (with the acidic vinegar) so you need to use low alkalinity water ... and on the podcast he explained (if I remember correctly) that when mixed like that it is as effective (if not better) than StarSan, with a similar contact time

I've been using it for around 3-4 years now, and can't remember any infected bottles in that time

Cheers, PhilB

 

[Rodcx500z]

I must say, to be fair, that I've never used Star San. On the other hand, I have used Five Star Beer Stone (BS) Remover and it categorically doesn't work. I tried the suggested dilution and worked up to full strength. hardly a mark.
I then tried supermarket strength hydrochloric acid and that didn't make much of a mark, either. In truth I didn't expect it to. Undiluted bleach seemed to work a little better, but not much and I'm now in the process of superannuating my ancient Hop and Grape Seven Gallon buckets in favour of Speidel fermenters. My point being, that if one product from this bunch of snake oil vendors doesn't work then I'm not going to waste my dosh trying another one.

Hi An, my routine is, plastic fvs, pb's, bottles pet, a good scrub with warm water and fairy liquid a really good rinse with cold water then a dose of Milton rip off 30 mins another rinse and away I go, my personal view is over the years the advertising boys have convinced us we will die if we don't do this or that, people are terrified of germs, I once saw a family at alton towers spray the whole table in a café and then put that gel **** on their hands before they ate a pizza even my daughter who was seven at the time commented on it she is 21 now and still alive, go to spain and other hot countrys take an early morning walk and you will smell bleach

 

[stevebea]

Hi An, my routine is, plastic fvs, pb's, bottles pet, a good scrub with warm water and fairy liquid a really good rinse with cold water then a dose of Milton rip off 30 mins another rinse and away I go, my personal view is over the years the advertising boys have convinced us we will die if we don't do this or that, people are terrified of germs, I once saw a family at alton towers spray the whole table in a café and then put that gel **** on their hands before they ate a pizza even my daughter who was seven at the time commented on it she is 21 now and still alive, go to spain and other hot countrys take an early morning walk and you will smell bleach

Very much agree.
Kids won't have a chance of developing any sort of immune system in this nanny state.
A very paranoid society.

 

[Peter Scandlyn]

@An Ankoù - snake oil vendors! Having a laugh, have to agree completely.

@stevebea - just in case you go the bleach way, don't leave it in prolonged contact with bleach.

Personally, I'm a bleach person and rinsing after contact has always been part of my game.

 

[strange-steve]

Except Starsan isn't snake oil, many people have been using it to great effect for years, myself included. I guarantee if you tried it you'd never go back to using bleach.

 

[stevebea]

Thanks for all the replies.
There's a lot to learn and i'd be struggling without all your help.
Cheers Steve.

 

[simon12]

I must say, to be fair, that I've never used Star San. On the other hand, I have used Five Star Beer Stone (BS) Remover and it categorically doesn't work. I tried the suggested dilution and worked up to full strength. hardly a mark.
I then tried supermarket strength hydrochloric acid and that didn't make much of a mark, either. In truth I didn't expect it to. Undiluted bleach seemed to work a little better, but not much and I'm now in the process of superannuating my ancient Hop and Grape Seven Gallon buckets in favour of Speidel fermenters. My point being, that if one product from this bunch of snake oil vendors doesn't work then I'm not going to waste my dosh trying another one.

I think beer stone needs a nitric acid based cleaner or just nitric acid, if my memory is correct I once spoke to a brewer that had an issue with it and this worked great https://murphyandson.co.uk/store/brewery-hygiene/145-nipac-b-30-kgliquidhz.html but is to hazardous for most home brewers.

 

[Drunkula]

I had so many batches of beer ruined by the 'no-rinse' Charley Talley acidified bleach. It's not that you can't trust his methodology it's that you can't trust thin bleach to be thin bleach. Sometimes you buy it and it is thin, buy the same bottle from the same manufacturer some other time and it'll have some surfactant left in it. Shake the bottle and see if there are foamy bubbles, if there are it's not thin bleach and you have to rinse.

Star San is always Star San.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

snake oil vendors! Having a laugh, have to agree complete

AA said in his post he has never used Star San his reference to snake oil was about other products, Star San has been discussed here many times and I cannot remember one saying its doesn't work.

 

[An Ankoù]

Ha. This debate is getting as entrenched as those about restoring capital punishment, Spurs v Arsenal and the dreaded "B" word. Each to his own, I say. For me it's a case of "once bitten, twice shy" and have a serious grump about wasting £9 on so called Beer Stone remover. So I shall continue to rinse out my cauldron with maidens' tears, at the crossroads, under a full moon while whistling the tune to Donny Osmonds' "Puppy Love". Never failed me yet so why change!
And with that, I have nothing more to say on the matter (unless I forget).

 

[Rodcx500z]

Ha. This debate is getting as entrenched as those about restoring capital punishment, Spurs v Arsenal and the dreaded "B" word. Each to his own, I say. For me it's a case of "once bitten, twice shy" and have a serious grump about wasting £9 on so called Beer Stone remover. So I shall continue to rinse out my cauldron with maidens' tears, at the crossroads, under a full moon while whistling the tune to Donny Osmonds' "Puppy Love". Never failed me yet so why change!
And with that, I have nothing more to say on the matter (unless I forget).

An as long as the ale is good does it matter , one ? what is beer stone