TOPIC:

I have very Hard water so Starsan Goes Cloudy straight away. The water is very good quality and makes great beer. I bought de-ionised water, tesco sell it in small 5lt carton. I also bought a window pot for plants which i fill with starsan so my spoons and siphons fit into lovely. I cannot rate staran enough. my bottles and fermenters were always smelling chlorine or the like off the powder sanatiser. So I was rinsing like a mad man to get rid of the smell. Espically from the 68 bottles. starsan sorted all that. And with the advent of water charges its a great product. worth every ml. small spay and job done.

I think u need to be very unlucky to get an infection. As when you take a hydrometer reading from the tap. There has to be some beer left in the nose of the tap for the next 7 days. So how come the beer going through this infected section does not infect the beer in the second fermenter. Just wondered thats all.
Cheers
T

I mostly clean things straight after use, FV's, bottles, boiler/mash tun. Its very easy and water and a soft sponge will do most of the work, some soda crystals if anything needs soaking, €1 in Dunnes

I sanatise everything with thin bleach/vineger solution.
20L 3 tablespoons of each, this is supposed to make a no-rinse solution, but I rinse anyway.

Others dont like this method but it works for me and hasnt let me down in over 20 brews.
It's extremely cheap, I'm on my 2nd 5L of Lidl bleach @ €1.39 and 7th Lidl vineger @79c.

Clean Everything thoroughly , then clean it again .
then clean it before you use it.
Sanitize with whatever you like as an added precaution.


Remember , people brewed for about 5 thousand years before anyone figured out about sanization .


But clean everything really really well

I've tested my star san with a proper pH meter, it's 3.4 when cloudy mixed with my tap water and 2.8 when used with water from Halfords. The guy from five star says pH3 is necessary to be sure to be sure, I know what I am happier using. I have had two infections that were extreme and the errors were one time with laying a lid down on a baby chair wrong way up, and one time putting an unsanitised ladel in the brew while taking a sample, normally I pour some star san into a jug and put the ladel in it. star san has not failed me yet.

&amp;quot;scaloban&amp;quot;:12uv6d3l wrote: Wow, alot of different opinions on this one. You must be even more confused than b4 <!-- s:wink: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_wink.gif" alt="" title="Wink" /><!-- s:wink: -->

In my experience (10 kits,3 Partial and 3 allgrain brews ish)I have only had 1 infection ever. Thats was my fault and not any cleaning products fault.

So what confuses me with some of the posts Iv read here is the idea that cloudy starsan does not work and spray bottles full of starsan do not work. Iv always used starsan and its always cloudy and Its even cloudy in the spray bottle that I store and use whenever I need over the space of months <!-- s:shock: --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_eek.gif" alt=":shock:" title="Shocked" /><!-- s:shock: --> Iv never had any trouble with starsan, Its always worked for me.
Have a look at this starsan experiment this dude did. Its very informative, be sure to look at the other starsan stuff he tests
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="www.youtube.com/user/immolateus#p/u/17/_niSffyAXO0">www.youtube.com/user/immolateus# ... niSffyAXO0

My advice is to clean all crud with hot water,remove the tap and clean it well(if you have one) rinse 2 times with boiling water and finsh by putting 1 gallon of cold water with starsan and shake the beejayzus out of it for a few mins.[/quote:12uv6d3l]

Read the Basic Brewing Radio link that I posted; it's an interview with the Owner and Inventor of Starsan and in it HE specifically explains the reaction that occurs between StarSan and high mineral content water and explains that this makes it go cloudy and that when it's cloudy it isn't sanitizing. StarSan is called an "Acid anionic" solution; the acid on it's own doesn't kill (well certainly not everything and certainly not in 2 minutes) and the anionic detergent on it's own doesn't kill but both of them together kill basically EVERYTHING including spores. [b:12uv6d3l][u:12uv6d3l]When StarSan is cloudy, it's not sanitizing; it's just a really expensive soap. [/u:12uv6d3l][/b:12uv6d3l]

-That video is only testing the PH of the cloudy StarSan solution over time; the acidic PH is not what makes it a short contact sanitizer so the whole experiment is based upon a logical fallacy.

Adam

&amp;quot;Spud 395&amp;quot;:1td5x6yq wrote: I mostly clean things straight after use, FV's, bottles, boiler/mash tun. Its very easy and water and a soft sponge will do most of the work, some soda crystals if anything needs soaking, €1 in Dunnes

I sanatise everything with thin bleach/vineger solution.
20L 3 tablespoons of each, this is supposed to make a no-rinse solution, but I rinse anyway.

Others dont like this method but it works for me and hasnt let me down in over 20 brews.
It's extremely cheap, I'm on my 2nd 5L of Lidl bleach @ €1.39 and 7th Lidl vineger @79c.[/quote:1td5x6yq]

Spud, this is EXACTLY the method that the owner of StarSan talks about in the Basic Brewing Radio podcast I linked to. He also says that the cheaper and more generic the bleach the better and also mentions that bleach's killing power starts degrading the moment it leaves the factory so you should buy small bottles if it's dedicated to brewing. The other obvious thing is to mix the bleach thoroughly with the water FIRST before adding the vinegar or you'll gas yourself. SAFETY FIRST! (He also mentions that if you're keeping the bleach to 80ppm it can be used as no-rinse sanitizer like you mentioned.)


Adam