After my first batch, in every stage of brewing (wort, ferment, bottle), I have cleaned all equipment with PBW and rinsed well. Forgive me if this sounds like an idiotic question but… I gotta ask!
Do I clean the equipment again just before use, somewhat of a secondary cleaning or was the initial cleaning that I did after brew day/bottle day sufficient?
Cheers!
One cleaning is sufficient. Store everything covered and/or upside down so no dust can get in them. You do need to sanitize anything that touches the wort/beer after the boil. I’d do that right before use. I prefer to keep Star-San in a spray bottle for that purpose.
Great forum handle, by the way. The Stand is one of my favorite King novels, and the miniseries from about 15 years ago was really good, too.
I clean everything after use. Put away clean. Quick rinse/ sanitize before use
+1 Same here.
+2 This is almost always my process as well.
Some days I don’t want to clean and almost talk myself into “I’ll just clean it tomorrow” but thankfully I’ve never done that. Always clean after and then rinse the spider webs out before brewing.
+3
I clean after, then put away the equipment in plastic bins. Then clean and sanitize before using it again. I’m a clean freak, I even mop the garage floor with bleach prior to brewing.
Depends on the equipment, I suppose. I usually clean as I go on brew days (e.g. once I’m done sparging, I give the HLT a quick rinse and dry it off, and then I’ll scoop the grain out of the MLT into the composter and wash and dry it while boiling). Since those are dry and covered, I usually don’t do anything to them on brew days unless there’s a spider web or something on them. Quick visual inspection and maybe a spray and they’re fine. After the wort is in the fermenter, I backflush the plate chiller to clear the chiller and line to the BK. Then the BK gets washed. I drain the water filters and plate chiller and I have some plastic caps to keep anything from crawling into them. After the beer is fermented and kegged, I’ll do an Oxyclean Free soak of the fermenters and rinse them well (that’s also how I typically clean the kegs).
On brew days, the only other cleaning related activity I typically perform is to mix sanitizer for the fermenters in the BK and then run it through the chiller to sanitize the chiller while sanitizing the fermenters. I typically then drain the fermenters into clean kegs to sanitize them.
I used to clean twice. Now I do what most of the other posters do, clean immediately after brewing and then rise everything out right before the next use. I have never had any problems with this method.
You know, if you do it this way, who can say you’re a freak? With brewing, clean always wins, and clean habits ensure a better product.
There is the opposite of this which is slobbiness. And with that you are just asking for trouble. “Too clean??” I don’t think so.
You just need to find what works for you, and do it consistently. Your beer will reward you for it.
Cleaning before and after has been my M O for years. Overkill? Maybe, but I’ve opened lower gravity (under 1.050) bottles of beer over a year old that were still really good.
Thanks everyone for all of the responses. I’m looking forward to starting my next batch!
Cheers!
You are wasting time and money sanitizing anything on the hot side…by all means clean and sani everything on the cold side…
I was going to also say that, just make sure you understand you don’t need to sanitize the mash tun or boil kettle. That would be a silly and redundant waste of time. As far as cleaning goes, yes, only clean up after brewday is really necessary and it’s best to clean up right away or at least first thing the next morning if it was a late one.
Yep, I only use the BK for sanitizer because it’s the most convenient way to sanitize the chiller and fermenters. That being said, I have occasionally left the MLT and BK wash until the next day, but always at least rinse them out. If you’ve ever gotten lazy and left them overnight or longer, you typically only do it once. 
Yep, the only time I ever left it till the next day was after a long double brew day and I was either too tired or too drunk or both.
Cleaning for me is pretty much rinsing out all hot side equipment very well (with deep cleaning by long PBW soak, scrubbing with scratch less pads, and full breakdown of valves and weld less bulkheads 2-3 times per year), then good cleaning with PBW, good rinse and sanitizer for all cold side equipment (hoses, pumps, fermenters, air locks, kegs) right after every use and rinse and sanitize before next use. I store my kegs charged with CO2 and a goodly amount of Star San foam residue to further inhibit nasties growing - then I blast it out through the dip tube before racking the next beer onto/under a bed of CO2.
It sounds like some of these processes used are overkill, but it’s your time and your peace of mind…so go with what suits you!
I’ve found mold growing on Star-San so I prefer to store kegs completely dry and pressurized with CO2.
I would think that the star San at that low volume level (basically just the foam residue that becomes liquid as it sits) combined with a CO2 pressurized setting would inhibit mold growth adequately. It’s not like a bucket of star San that is exposed to the air. But whatever works for you is cool with me - I assume that you sanitize once again before you fill the keg, since the drying process alone would seem to expose the keg to potential airborne microbes, however slight that risk…