I miss the old Jackhammer-packs. But I don’t miss the trips to Home Depot’s tool rental department.
Mark, once again my experience disagrees with your advice. I’ve used StarSan for sanitation on starters hundreds of times and never had a problem. While it may not be ideal from a theoretical standpoint, in reality it works.
Alcohol is even more no-rinse than Star San. Alcohol is the standard sanitizer for this type of work in a laboratory.
Well, your advice is at odds with every laboratory on the planet. Star San is not full spectrum. That’s a well documented fact. Not to mention that Star San is more toxic than isopropanol. Home brewing is the only no-rinse application of dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid that I have been able to identify. The reason why Star San foams is because the active ingredient is used to make detergents, not mention that it is corrosive to metals.
First, it’s my experience, not necessarily my advice! And by now, you should know that being at odds with the “authorities” doesn’t bother me. I understand there may be a better way to do things. But as long as my methods stand up to my own scrutiny, they’re good enough for me. I post about what I do so that others can try it if they like. I don’t try to convince anyone that mine is the best, or only, way to do things. It’s simply my way. I do appreciate your info so that I can compare the best practices you post to my own methods and decide if the info is relevant to me.
Mark, stupid question, but is there any reason not to use rubbing alcohol as a general-purpose no-rinse sanitizer? If it were that simple why isn’t everyone using it?
The other sanitizers are cheaper when a large volume of sanitizer is needed as well as the fact that alcohol is highly flammable (one of its strengths in a lab).
Ya I dont think I want to be sprizing alcohol clouds around on brew day.
I flame all my brewery glassware. Why turn down an opportunity to play with fire?
Rubbing ethyl alcohol has additives specifically to make it toxic for oral consumption, and isopropanol is toxic in sufficient quantities. I don’t think you’d have to worry at the quantities we’d be working with, but I’m not to excited about dumping a bottle in my carboy.
Any spirits at 140 proof or higher would be sufficient, but as Mark mentioned that gets to be cost prohibitive.
Ethanol is slightly less effective than isopropanol. From what I understand, the additives in isopropynol are sucrose octaacetate and denatonum benzoate. Both of these compounds are bittering agents to dissuade people from drinking the stuff. Ethanol is a also toxin. We just to do not recognize it as one. Ethanol is broken down into acetaldehyde by the human body. Acetaldehyde damages human tissue.
This post makes remember reading a piece on why beer is an acquired taste. Humans are naturally programmed to reject bitter tasting substances because most bitter things in nature are poisonous.
As my wife likes to say, everything, including water, is toxic in high enough quantities.
I’ve been wondering if I’ve been fighting a mild persistent infection in my beers. My thoughts on using rubbing alcohol as a “nuclear” option for a few beers and see where that leads me.
With my brewery I really require a no-rinse sanitizer, unless I did all my sanitizing on the complete other end of the condo. With a no-rinse option I can tackle everything in the garage. Iodophor may be my eventual choice for a sanitizer, but I’d like to prove to myself that star-san isn’t killing what’s in my garage before I switch to a product that can stain.
This has happened to me before too. It’s called a smack pack, you smack it…so hard enough to break the packet inside. Sometimes it doesn’t wanna break. It’s not that out there for one to break open now and then. Now if it was already partially puffed up before smacking, I probably wouldn’t try to break the inner packet in that case.
Do you do wort stability tests? That’s the first step. From there, assuming something turns up, you could move to pre-poured plates to narrow it down (HLP for Lacto/Pedio, SDA for Aceto/Entero, agar for yeast).
Edit for formatting.
Near the boil kettle with the fire going? If I used a spray bottle of alcohol the way I use starsan, I would be missing even more hair.
Why would you be sanitizing the kettle during the boil, though?
And I’m not “missing” hair, it’s just migrating.
I wouldn’t. I’m just imagining a cloud of vaporized alcohol drifting over to my burners.
If you do not want to use bleach and vinegar, you can use 12.5ppm iodophor. Both solutions are no rinse and full spectrum. I have been using 12.5ppm iodophor lately.
I used Lin’s Wild Yeast Medium to detect the wild yeast infection that was plaguing my brewery when I was using Star San.
Iodophor isn’t sporicidal (neither is alcohol, by the way). If you’re looking for a truly “nuclear” option then bleach is the way to go.
One other point of note regarding iodophor is that it may degrade certain types of silicone. In the medical field iodophors aren’t used on silicone tubing as a precaution. I don’t know how many brewers use silicone tubing on the cold side, but I figured I’d put that out there.
Personally, I have yet to run into any issues with Star-San in my brewery. I have several spray bottles of both Star San and Iodophor floating around and I feel comfortable reaching for either one if needed.