9
votes
How clean does your equipment really need to be?
TL; DR; You need to clean!
You do this for safety, repeatability, and to avoid wasting your effort. I have cleaned poorly before and wasted brews of both wine and beer, since I took a more rigorous ...
- 7,018
5
votes
When sterilising my bottling bucket, do I need to totally fill it (5gal) with sterilising solution?
I'm going to assume that you mean "sanitize", not "sterilize".
What is the difference between Clean, Sanitized and Sterilized?
How much you need to use would depend on what you use for sanitizing. ...
- 439
4
votes
Sodium Percarbonate safety
Sodium percarbonate forms hydrogen peroxide which eventually breaks down into oxygen and water.
1a. I think you'd have to leave a lot in. Apparently hydrogen peroxide is used as an antiseptic ...
3
votes
Do I have to use Campden tablets every time I expose my wine to external factors?
You said you added Campden and potassium metabisulfate. Did you know they are the same thing? (Sometimes they are sodium metabisulfate, but do essentially the same thing)
Wine is not beer. Do not ...
- 3,012
3
votes
How clean does your equipment really need to be?
Unfortunately, yes, it is needed.
When I was starting, in my first year, I lost a lot of batches, I could say 2 from 3 batches were lost due to bad cleaning, I never figured exactly what I was not ...
- 131
3
votes
Sterilising tips?
As Pepi noted in the comments it would take a serious infection to be noticeable in 24 hours (Just think how long it takes yeast to get going and that is supplied into fermentable at a huge number of ...
- 31
2
votes
What is the difference between Clean, Sanitized and Sterilized?
"clean" "sanitize" "sterilize" are all terms used by the FDA. the comments explaining the relative log level of effectiveness are spot on: sanitize: log 5 ~ 99.999 effectiveness is all that is ...
- 21
2
votes
How clean does your equipment really need to be?
Cleaning is definitely the least fun part (besides drinking the beer, terrible) about brewing but after a few spoiled batches I too take it almost to the extreme. The pain of dumping a batch and whole ...
- 671
2
votes
Accepted
Can I use Sodium Dichloroisocyanurate ('Sterilising Tablets') to clean vessel/equipment?
Without knowing what the tablets were intended for I wouldn't use them.
While in high concentrations a Sodium Dichloroisocyanurate solution would work for sanitizing but would be a poor choice for ...
- 18.5k
2
votes
How clean does your equipment really need to be?
It's like with any other food preparation equipment: your stuff needs to be clean, but don't go too crazy with 100%-germ-free / kill-everything-sanitizer-from-hell.
During brewing you boil the wort ...
- 1,266
2
votes
Sterilizing flip-top bottles in the oven, sealing for later use
I think it's worth mentioning that as homebrewers, we really need to be think about living in the "sanitization" realm rather than the "sterilization" realm. We have households, ...
- 771
2
votes
Sodium Percarbonate safety
1 - It will leave extra salt in your beer and raise the pH, which won't make anyone sick at reasonable levels.
2 - Lower the pH of the solution, like you did with vinegar, so that carbonate doesn't ...
- 328
2
votes
Accepted
Does Iodophor change the flavor profile of beer?
Potentially it can. However, at the recommended dilution level, and if you drain the sanitized equipment well (i.e. not leave puddles of sanitizer) the impact on flavour is not perceptible. Especially ...
- 1,498
1
vote
Does Iodophor change the flavor profile of beer?
It can.
It's intended to be dried before use with anything that has significant surface area contact with beer or wort. Lines, fermentors etc.
The only exception is the wet assembly of sanitary ...
- 18.5k
1
vote
Proper use of campden tablets in a recipe that calls for the staggered addition of a sugar source
You should be totally good to go using the maple syrup without any treatment, because it has been simmered for quite a long time to make it into syrup. No worries there so long as your syrup folks ...
- 368
1
vote
Accepted
Proper use of campden tablets in a recipe that calls for the staggered addition of a sugar source
OK... Let's think about this critically. Suppose your maple syrup had some stray yeast in it. What would happen? Well, yeast eats sugars and burbs CO2 and pees alcohol. What does that mean for your ...
- 1,152
1
vote
How clean does your equipment really need to be?
The trouble with questions like this is in our litigious world if anyone says don't clean and you poison yourself on a home brew and you live in the US you may believe you have the right to sue!!!
So ...
- 153
1
vote
When sterilising my bottling bucket, do I need to totally fill it (5gal) with sterilising solution?
It is probable that you could just pasteurise the (otherwise clean) bucket using a kettle of boiling water. Boil the kettle, pour the boiled water down the sides of the bucket working round the bucket ...
- 5,631
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