I hate sanitizing

[Sourcheese]

Just saying. I think of the entire process, I hate sanitizing the most. I think I go a little overboard with it too.

Perhaps mead is so tough that it doesnt need it? Just hot water and a prayer. I want to find this out.

Gnight all.

[tweak'e]

i think the most important things is phyical removal of dirt and cleaning AFTER use so there is no food for bugs to eat and breed while your gear sits stored away.

[Chevette Girl]

Read up on what others do... there are all kinds of little tricks to make the sanitizing less painful... Fatbloke and me and a couple others keep a spraybottle of it and soak down stuff that's hard to pour directly into, and once you do everything a couple of times you figure out what way works best for you. And a good wash with hot soapy water hasn't hurt any of my JAO's, and most meads and wines really are pretty resistant, but when you're doing a big expensive batch, why risk it if you can take a few ounces of prevention?

[Sourcheese]

I need to find out if thats true or not. Ill spend like an hour to 2 hours cleaning this shit. Rinsing and cleaning and whatever. If after I clean anything that would come in contact with my mead touches anything I do it all over again. And I usually use starsan. I used iophore tonight... I hate it. Stains everything and reminds me to much of surgical scrub iodine. Infact if this isnt iodine then I am a blind fool who has forgotten the face of his father.


Chevette girl... would just using starsan and rinsing once work? Let the bubbles kill everything? sit for like 30 minutes then rinse with hot water?

[Chevette Girl]

Go back to starsan then, don't use something you dislike... I use potassium metabisulphite solution. I keep a 1-litre mason jar full, plus the spray bottle, and when I'm actually bottling, I use a bottle rinser too. That also works really well for pushing it through the racking hose... I run some through the racking cane and then spray down the outside. You might find having a sanitary bucket might help, spray or rinse down the sides of it and anything sanitized goes in there where it's safe to put it down... then when you're done, rinse in water, rinse with sanitizer, back in the bucket in case you need it again.

I give it about 30 seconds minimum (I think it's supposed to get two minutes), but it's better than spray and dunk! Check your product's instructions, that'll tell you how long things need to soak, I'm pretty sure the bubbles ARE supposed to kill anything left behind.

You'll figure it out, and you'll tweak your procedures until you've got something you can live with.

[Sourcheese]

great reply and my thanks. Ive been using spare fermentation buckets to soak it in, and a random large tupperware container to dry it in to work.

I like the idea of a spray bottle.

You give great advice thank you.


And as a side note, I thought this mead would be ready by christmas. Now Im thinking it wont be. I have seen it age well. I plan to marry my girlfreind within 2 years.

It would be fantastic to have about 17 gallons of mead bottled and ready to go by a beach with a pigroast ready to be drank.

[dingurth]

I just straight followed the advice on the newbee guide. Soak everything in bleach water for 15-20 mins, then rinse until you can't smell bleach anymore. The rinsing is the longest part afterwards. For the little things, it doesn't take much to get them clean, but for the carboys and racking equipment, I have to rinse them at least 4 times usually. Not including the 20 minute soak, it probably only takes me half an hour to sanitize for a batch.

After I've bottled or racked, I take the dirty carboys and rinse/scrub them out with hot soapy water and wait until the next batch to actually sanitize them.

[Noe Palacios]

Originally Posted by Chevette Girl

I 'm pretty sure the bubbles ARE supposed to kill anything left behind.

Actually they don't, surface activeness gives other benefits which are:

• Detachment of adhered particles from vessel's surface.
  
• Encreasing the contact surface by purging air from the microscopic pores of the vessel's wall, so chemicals bonded to the surface active substance are allowed to do a better job. Note: these pores are almost inexistent if you use stainless steel vessels.

When I do something in my nano-meadery, 50% of the working time is sanitizing. I hate it too, but it is necesary.

What do you think? - If I place a UV lamp in my nano-meadery - Will it be aseptic enough so I could reduce my sanitizing time and efforts to the minimum?

Saludos,

[Whatshisface]

I used to use bleach to sanitize my equipment but I found that it can definitely ruin ales. The other problem I have with bleach is all the rinsing. I have well water and I never feel comfortable rinsing with it. Now I sanitize with Star San and only need to rinse once with boiled well water or distilled water. The good thing with Star San is that it is an acid based sanitizer and can be reused over and over again so long as the Ph level stays at 3 or less. When I am brewing, I generally have two buckets one for sanitizing and one for rinse.

[dingurth]

Originally Posted by Noe Palacios

What do you think? - If I place a UV lamp in my nano-meadery - Will it be aseptic enough so I could reduce my sanitizing time and efforts to the minimum?

I was thinking about this myself. I assume you mean just leaving your equipment under a UV lamp and not any mead you would be currently working on... I don't think that would go well for the yeasties. I know a lot of research is being done in the medical field for treating wounds with UV light and having them in hospitals, but I have no idea how much you would need/how powerful the bulbs would need to be. Plus a problem you would run into is that if you are using glass carboys, well glass absorbs UV light, so it wouldn't actually pass through and clean the inside. I suppose you could lower a small one through the neck of the bottle. Anyone ever heard of someone using UV to sanitize?

[Nathan K]

Originally Posted by Sourcheese

... And I usually use starsan. I used iophore tonight... I hate it. Stains everything and reminds me to much of surgical scrub iodine. Infact if this isnt iodine then I am a blind fool who has forgotten the face of his father.

Chevette girl... would just using starsan and rinsing once work? Let the bubbles kill everything? sit for like 30 minutes then rinse with hot water?

Iodophor is quite a bit different, chemically speaking, than iodine. It is an iodine molecule bonded to a polymer and it is roughly 1000 times less toxic than iodone.

You shouldn't rinse any sanitizer, including starsan. Rinsing can technically "re-infect" what you just sanitized. There are two main components to cleaning/sanitizing. You should first remove any physical dirt that you can see. Once the vessel is so clean that you can't see any dirt, you should sanitize to remove invisible bugs. Different sanitizers have different requirements for contact time. For instance, bleach/water mix needs about 20 minutes of contact time, Iodophor needs about 2 minutes, and starsan needs about 30 seconds. The directions on starsan (I'm looking at a bottle right now) say that you should let it air-dry after sanitizing. You should always clean your equipment ASAP after emptying it. Leaving nasty gunk in your carboys will make it harder to clean them later.

As to whether or not it's required, I do it just to be safe. I've had batches of beer go bad before when I wasn't careful. That said, alcohol kills most undesirables so if you have a very strong primary fermentation it's very possible to overwhelm any nasties that might be present.