To all who replied: Thank you. All that was written is tasty info.
I think I’ll try the iodophor stuff. I’d still have to drive the 80-mile round trip to get it but maybe it’s a powder and can be had in larger volumes than can StarSan. My plan is to sanitize my bottles and caps during the bottling phase by holding five or six underwater for the several minutes of contact time required. I’ll be bottling in one-liter bottles, so I’ll need just 22 or 23 to bottle the whole six gallons. I understand that my plan will take much more time than how the really knowledgeable and experienced brewers would sterilize their bottles, but I’m willing to take that extra time to get bottles that aren’t going to infect my product halfway to the day I get to crack one open.
I have a 22-gallon tote from Walmart that will be used to sterilize the fermenter and the bottling bucket. I figger about three gallons of sterilant solution will provide a sufficient depth to roll the buckets on their long axis for the several minutes required to kill all the bad actors we face when making beer at home. The transfer valves and gaskets would also take a dip.
I order iodophor through Amazon and use it for sanitizing most stuff. As for bottles, I rinse after I pour the beer, run it through the dishwasher with the other dishes to make sure they are clean and then on the day of bottling, I run them through again without the soap in order to sanitize with heat.
The added advantage is that I can bottle over the dishwasher and the door can catch any drips.
i may be wrong in my perception of how you’re doing this… but, IMHO
copy what other homebrewers do and works for them. i think youre overthinking this sanitization stuff.
i am also a frugal homebrewer but there is a major improvement in enjoyment and ease of this hobby in buying stuff designed for homebrewing ie. homebrewing sanitizers, equipment designed for or consistently used by homebrewers. trust me it will pay off in lack of aggravation and success.
and yeah as was said iodophor is a liquid and can be bought off amazon and delivered.
Just to be clear, bleach used on my HDPE fermenters, are not the be all.
Whenever an overnight bleach solution soak is done, it’s always rinsed with water.
Followed up with an iodophor rinse, fermenter is closed then shaken, then air dried.
After storage and fermenter is ready to be used, it’s rinsed with StarSan.
Do you have a dishwasher? When I bottle I wash them thoroughly and then put them in the dishwasher on the hottest setting available… some dishwashers also have a sanitize setting. I skip the Starsan/Iodophore/etc. mixing altogether.
Yes; I have a dishwasher. I suspect it’s not doing the job because I’m seeing dried-on food remains after two wash cycles. I rent my billet, so getting a new dishwasher would be quite a task. Management has no desire to spend any money that might make life better for the tenants. I’m thinking the pump in the thing is buggered. I expect I’ll soon be washing dishes by hand-- like I did decades ago when I was in college. I learned to wash dishes by hand when I was not yet twelve years old. It’s one of those things you never forget…
I wouldn’t trust a dishwasher anyway. According to BYO, “The heated rinse cycle of a home dishwasher is great for sanitizing bottles, but keep two things in mind. First, the bottles still need to be clean prior to being placed in the dishwasher; any deposits inside the bottles will not be removed by the water spray. Second, be sure to run at least one cycle of water only (no soap) in the dishwasher prior to placing your bottles in.” [https://web.archive.org/web/20120307224446/https:/byo.com/stories/article/indices/19-brewing-tips/52-24-brewing-tips-and-rules-of-thumb]
I agree about running the dishwasher with no soap in order to clean the bottles. The mouths of the bottles are so small that I’m guessing very little of the water gets in there to do the job we want.
In something totally unrelated, I found several dozen 22-ounce beer bottles behind a door of my kitchen cabinets that hasn’t been opened in years and years. These bottles are heavy, so they have to be for bottling homebrew. They are also of the crimp-top variety. I have no memory of ever putting these bottles on the lazy susan behind the door, nor of ever buying them. I have no memory of anybody ever gifting these bottles to me. I have no memory of ever buying and drinking several dozen of thick, heavy brown bottles of beer just to get the bottles. I prefer transparent, one-liter plastic soda bottles so I can see the trub moving toward the mouth as I pour. I have no idea as to what I will do with these bottles. For now, they are back behind the door and will set there for the next decade or two…
Food remaining on your dishes can be an indication the food screen at the bottom of you dish washer needs to be emptied and cleaned. Not all dish washers have one but it would be worth taking a look to get your dishes cleaner. They are removable from the inside (generally) so nothing to disassemble.
Would some solution of 91% isopropyl alcohol and water be a good sanitizer? The alcohol would speed the drying of the solution and the stuff is cheap at Walmart. If my thinking is correct, 91% alcohol has 29.12 ounces of pure alcohol in a total solution of 32 ounces. You’d have a 4.35% solution of alcohol in five gallons of water plus the 29.12 ounces of pure alcohol: 29.12/669.12 = 0.0435. If that’s too low a concentration, we can go to four gallons. That would make a solution of 5.38 percent.
I have to ask: If alcohol can kill the type of bacteria we want to kill, why do we not use it instead of StarSan or any of the other brewery washes available? Maybe it just isn’t powerful enough?