Has anyone ever heard that starsan is ineffective at higher temps? I have Been home brewing for a while and never heard anything and have used it with hot water. I have been working at a brewery for a little over a month and one of the other brewers told me that starsan doesn’t work at high temps. I went to the starsan website and the only heat info talks about toxic gases given off at high heat during fire conditions. I rarely use starsan in fire so I am not that worried about it. The temp I was using it at was about 180 deg. Let me know what you know.
I know that idophor is not recommended to be used at high temp because it causes the active ingredient to off gas much much faster. Don’t know that it would matter with star san though.
Yeah, I want to know what happens to starsan.
I’d ask Five Star - their product support address is support@fivestarchemicals.com
Acid solutions are usually more active at higher temperatures. You may want to keep the temperature below 150 if possible though, the acids may evolve out of solution as you get closer to boiling temps. Proper ventilation is never a bad thing. You may have noticed that when you are heating sparge water, for instance, that bubbles form and steam starts evolving far before reaching the boiling point.
Ok, so I found out the reason to not use starsan at high temps. The reason is that at higher temps, you will actually lower the pH of your solution. So instead of being at say 9 or so pH at room temp. You will actually be closer to 7 at a higher temp. ( this was just an example)
Isn’t a proper Star San ph below 3?
Yep. and lowering the pH will only make it more active. This could be a problem if you are using it in aluminum for instance, but SST will be able to handle it (the process is called passivation). The pH probably won’t get low enough for that though.
Correct, Starsan is an acid. Everything from my last post, switch it around. The pH goes up making it neutral.
Where did you find the answer?
- Sent by my R2 unit
Yep. and lowering the pH will only make it more active. This could be a problem if you are using it in aluminum for instance, but SST will be able to handle it (the process is called passivation). The pH probably won’t get low enough for that though.
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So when I add 40 ccs instead of 30 cc for 5 gallons, is that making it more acidic?
So is more better?
At killing organisms, probably. But then it may no longer be a no rinse sanitizer
What if you refrigerate Starsan? The only reason I ask is I’ve been known to keep some in a keg in my keg fridge. This is to reuse later and I have even put it on an empty tap before, for easy use when needed. So would low temp say beer serving temps adversely affect the PH?
Yep. At NHC I was talking to Jim from Five Star and told him I mixed it stronger to get the pH down. He said that at stronger concentrations it’s no longer no rinse.
Because of flavor issues or pH issues? Seems like any remaining volume would still be diluted out so much that it would have a negligible affect on the pH of your final volume of beer in the fermentation vessel.
So at what mixture do I need to be concerned?
May be true, but it is approved by FDA as a no-rinse sanitizer at the labeled concentration. They’ll never tell you to use a different concentration, it would be illegal for them to do that. Can’t tell you what the effect would be, but it may have nothing to do with yeast health or flavor.
I don’t know which or how much. But Five Star is great about answering questions, so you could email them.