Is it necessary? If you’ve cleaned your small parts and sanitized them, do you need to run Starsan through after BLC?
No reason to sanitize twice. Wash, rinse, sanitize.
Star San isn’t the best choice for lines though. You want something low-foaming.
So is BLC a sanitizer, or a detergent?
It’s a caustic cleaner. There’s probably a detergent/surfactant component, but I don’t know offhand. I’d google the MSDS but I’m on my phone.
Not sure about Power Punch 22 (BLC), but some cleaners need an acid rinse afterwards to remove any residual cleaner. Since Star San is phosphoric acid that should do you.
I haven’t had any BLC in a while, I have been using Oxiclean lately, but always run Star San behind it.
I’ve been wondering this as well, wondering if it’s really necessary. Getting a little tired of wasting the CO2, opening and closing my kegs to refill with BLC, then StarSan…my process seems to be working fine, but if I don’t need to run StarSan after BLC, then I don’t want to bother with it. The instructions on the BLC bottle say to rinse with clean water, I think. So I run BLC, then water, then StarSan through. So if I can cut down on something there, I’d love to.
I’ve heard from several people (probably on this forum) that don’t sanitize after BLC. There probably isn’t much that can survive a caustic cleaner!
I would worry that you are potentially re-introducing contaminants with the rinse water. yes the caustic probably killed everything in the line but what’s in your tap water?
So there seems to be consensus that, no, don’t sanitize after BLC…I take it the beer will just rinse it clean when you first tap and run the yeast crud out.
I have typically rinsed lines with clean water, flushed several times with BLC and that’s it. I think I remembered reading on the BLC bottle that there was no need to rinse with water. I have just been reanalyzing my sanitizing procedures and wanted to make sure I was doing it right. Thanks all for the comments.
I do the BLC, cold water rinse, StarSan regimen. Doesn’t take much.
I modified a 2 gallon garden sprayer (new) to use as my line cleaning tank. Just remove the wand and replace with a ball/pin lock post and your good to go. It’s light, no CO2 required and you can purge the lines with pressurized air at the end of a flush if you like as well. Maybe $30 in materials.
If you aren’t in a DIY mood, that’s roughly what the commercial units cost. The Micro Matic Touch: The Best Quality Beverage Dispensing Systems
Never use caustics without a thorough HOT water rinse. The solubility falls off sharply at low temperatures.
Guess I’ll keep doing what I’m doing then.
I didn’t mean to suggest that you not rinse BLC, just that some sort of manual air pump vessel would be easier to deal with than corny kegs for line cleaning and save CO2.
Ok, I getcha. I think I’ll still just stick with my current process.