I saw a video recently where the brewer was simply spraying a sanitizing solution from a spray bottle and coating the fermenting bucket. Does anyone do this instead of filling the bucket with solution? This seems to be a lot less time consuming and a water saver.
I pour a couple cups of sanitizer in the bucket and use a clean rag dedicated to sanitizing to wipe down the inside of the bucket with the sanitizer that I just dumped in. I usually use vertices swipes around the bucket about four times around… Seems to work well for me.
I add about a gallon and shake. I use RO and save my sanitizer across multiple batches.
RO?
Reverse Osmosis water; distilled would work too.
It’s about contact. Spritzing works fine. I fill, but I use it for other things like refreshing my spritzer etc.
Are you saying you mix your sanitizer with RO? Any advantage in doing so over tap water?
It lasts much longer when mixed with water that doesn’t have minerals. At least that’s what I’ve been told.
I stretch my RO based starsan out for 3 or so months. I dump it when it gets too low to be useful for bottles and racking canes.
I always have a 5 gal bucket full of starsan mix. On brew day I use it to keep stuff on hand and when im ready to go to primary I just pour one into another and then rack. Cover up the second one and store till next bree day. I can usually get about a month with tap water.
Is there a need to cover up or seal mixed star san solution?
From what I have been told, yes. I keep mine in a spare “ale pail” with the lid on.
When I forget to cover the star-san in my garage I often find some well sanitized flies in it so I cover.
I did measure the pH of some older cloudy star-san once and it was still below 3 so I used it with no problems. Ultimately the pH is what drives the effectiveness from what I’ve read so if you wanted to measure all the time, I think you’d be OK but most of us assume cloudy means it’s not worth using. My tap water is very hard and I get cloudy immediately and it always works when I’ve forgotten to bring home some distilled.
Get it clean. Really clean. Spray it down. Repeat the spray if think it makes you feel better. This is what I do for my conical fermenter. For buckets I dump star san in and make sure it hits all of the surface by rolling/shaking. Can’t pick up or roll the conical.
When I used buckets, this is exactly what I did. Even today with my conicals, I spray them down pretty good.
I also just spray down the inside of the bucket. With better bottles and my smaller five liter glass jugs I dump some sanitizer in the vessel and roll it around/shake to cover the interior because I can’t get in there and make sure I’ve sprayed down the entire surface.
I usually put 1-2 gal of starsan solution in the fermenting bucket and use that to sanitize during the brew. When it comes time to rack into the primary fermenter, I roll and shake the bucket with the solution to make sure it comes into contact with all sides. Haven’t had any problems with that as of yet.
I agree with cleaning really well and then using the sprayer. I make sure my gear is super clean. Then it’s pretty easy to just spritz it down while rotating the bucket. By the time you’re all the way around, you’ll have enough in there to slosh around with the lid on. But honestly, a foam coating is A-ok.
On the other hand, you’ll never kick yourself for being too thorough with sanitation.
I have a dedicated 5 gal bucket with a gamma lid for my StarSan. After my bucket is clean, I use my auto-siphon (which has been soaking in the SS bucket along with the hose) to siphon all the SS from its home into the fermenter. I slosh it around and then pour it back, rotating the fermenter as I go. It sounds like a painus (and way overkill) but it’s mostly hands-off time while I’m attending to other things.
As others have said: the key is CLEAN. Sanitation is really just a precaution. Coating the surface is all you need. Be sure you sanitizer is effective by the RO trick or by mixing up fresh just before it is time to sanitize. If it looks dirty or grungy or extremely cloudy mix up fresh.