So the last time I bottled I soaked my bottles in starsan.
When I drained them of the starsan they left bubbles and foam so when I was dumping the beer in I let it overflow I little to push out the residue.
Is it alright to have a little starsan left in the bottle? Or should I do something different?
Perfectly fine. Don’t fear the foam!
That’s what I thought. For kicks and giggles I tasted it and It just felt slimy no taste. I was jut wondering if there were any chemical reactions or anything.
I have heard people from Five Star say that the residue from Starsan actually acts as a yeast nutrient.
No worries with StarSan’s foam. I’m not wild about it either, but I try to sanitize far enough in advance that the foam dies down and the remaining fluid can be dumped out before proceeding with bottling.
Using it to sanitize bottles quickly isn’t ideal since pouring StarSan into and back out of bunch of bottles a few minutes later just tends to make a lot of foam (and hassle). I still use StarSan for brew day (sanitizing the fermenter buckets) and kegging day, but not for bottling.
I switched to One Step for bottling–so much easier (no foaming).
5-star also makes SaniClean, which is a low foam acid sanitizer. But I never fear the foam anyway and haven’t tried it.
It is an acid sanitizer, the sanitizing ability is linked to the pH of the solution so once diluted it is harmless.
I like starsan for just about any sanitizing needs and don’t worry about residue or foam. If you got a “sanitize” feature in a dishwasher that works out well- just rinse out the bottles real good and run them through a rinse/sanitize cycle. Then I rack over the dishwasher with the door open. No mess…
In my experience i usually see the foam evaporate pretty quickly from inside the bottle. A quick turn upside down just before filling and it gets out most of the residue. What’s left i don’t worry about. Foam is good. I also learned yesterday that my swamp cooler can double as a sanitization trough lol.
No problem I do that all the time. Star san is great stuff and Im never afraid if it gets into my beer.
When I fill with a racking cane/picnic tap, I fill until beer reaches the very top (or even slightly over flows) and then remove the cane leaving a small head space. During this, any star-san foam seems to float out of the bottle on the beer anyway.