GabrielKnight

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1. Do you need to sanitise your hands if they need to come in contact with your grog eg. when shaking carboy with hand over top to degass? What sanitiser can I use while protecting my beautiful pinkys?

2. How long do sanitised utensils stay sanitised? Can you for example sanitise a hydrometer and leave it on a shelf for a couple of weeks before it is used?

3. Is there really any harm in using paper towels to dry sterilised equipment? Good quality kitchen roll would surely be cleaner than leaving equipment with water soaking up the dust in surrounding air?

4. Is it a good precaution to use brand new cork bungs for each brew?

5. Is it okay to clean, steralise and reuse a heavily soiled (from a previous brew) plastic polypin?

6. Can I use cheap vodka as a no rinse steriliser for small utensils? Does it matter if there is still some undried vodka on a hydrometer / thermometer / thief?

7. Is it safe to use Isopropyl alcohol?

8. Is Detol kitchen spray applied with kitchen roll good for wiping down work surfaces (says it kills 99.9% germs).

9. How long do you soak clean items in VMP?

10. How many times do you rinse?

Revvy

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You'll find most if not all your questions answered here...

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/sanitizer-question-54932/?highlight=sanitizer+question

And the rest of them you are overthinking and don't need to worry about.

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GabrielKnight

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Well, that's one way to bring a thread that took me 20 minutes to compose to a swift end, leaving no-one else to answer!

I've spent another 20 minutes reading the thread you suggested but it comprised of 8 pages that primarily dealt with discussions on the products one-step, starsan and idophor, two of which I have no access to and none of which I plan to use.

I can see that you are a very experienced member here, and undoubtedly have much more success in brewing than I do, but the questions I asked are important to me because 2 of my last 4 projects have had disappointing results despite me following sanitation and kit instructions to the letter.

I'm hoping that if my questions are answered, I can judge where I have been taking unneccesary risks and which of my methods I can discount as ok. Some of the questions are rather specific but if people are able to answer a few at a time, they will hopefully help others in the future too. Atb.

llazy_llama

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Are you in the US?

If so, you have access to Star San, One-Step, and Iodophor.

If you're planning on ad-libbing your sanitation, have fun with that. I hope you're a fan of sour beers.

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SumnerH

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Yes, you do. Sanitize a piece of saran wrap to hold over the top. If you need hands, put on rubber gloves and dip in sanitizer.

I've sanitized my hands directly in an emergency (in star-san, no problems) but that's not nearly as sanitary.

No. The shelf isn't sanitized. Even if it was, airborne stuff is always floating around; the longer an item gets from sanitization, the higher the risk of infection. Sanitize immediately before using.

Personally, I'm okay with stuff sanitized up to maybe 10 minutes ahead of time that's been left exposed to the air. I'll sanitize a bucket earlier if I'm also sanitizing the lid and putting it back on top. Just leave things sitting in your bucket of sanitizer until you need them.

If you sanitize a closed-system (e.g sanitize bottles with aluminum foil covering the top) that's another story, since they're not exposed to the air or other unsanitized media.

Never rinse with unsanitized water. Use star-san or iodophor so that you don't need to rinse. As long as it's wet, it's covered in sanitizer and so it should be safe.

Definitely don't wipe with paper towels, you have no way to sanitize them safely.

Rubber stops air better and can be sanitized.

Clean, sanitize, and reuse, yes. Sterilizing a plastic item is almost impossible (an autoclave/pressure cooker is just about the only home-sterilization method available, and it'd melt plastic).

You need 80% concentration of alcohol for 45 seconds to sanitize. Your cheap vodka is likely 40% alcohol (80 proof) and way too low a concentration for sanitizing unless you have very, very long contact times (but it's not going to grow stuff on its own or harm already-sanitized stuff, so it's okay for filling airlocks and such).

No, people use it in airlocks all the time. Just don't use it to sanitize things.

Safe how?

Detol contains chloroxylenol, which is not safe to ingest

What's VMP?

Never rinse an item once it's sanitized--your water is not sanitized. You could boil water to sanitize it and then use that to rinse, but that's a waste and you lose the protective aspect of having your equipment covered in a layer of wet sanitizer. Just use a good no-rinse sanitizer.

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BioBeing

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Wear gloves. Sanitize the gloves.

They stay sanitized until they come in contact with microbes, or until the microbes that you did not kill the first time round (as you only sanitized, not sterilized) start to grow again. If you sanitize a spoon and put it down on an unsanitized work surface, you now have an unsanitized spoon. So, to your specific question: no.


Clean != sanitary.

Are you making wine? I'd say yes to this, but don't know.

How can it be clean and heavily soiled at the same time? If you have cleaned it well and sanitized it, unless it is badly scratched, I'm sure you could use it.

Yes to the first, hardly to the second, unless you are tipping tons of vodka into your hydro sample.

Questionable. IPA is not very toxic, but most of the stores round here at least put a green dye in it. Plus, it doesn't smell good. I wouldn't want it coming near anything I was going to injest.

Yes. Again, you don't want to be getting detol into your beer/wine though. Isn't it pine scented? Yeuchh!

What is VMP?

None. I use a no-rinse sanitizer. If you use bleach, you must rinse until you can no longer smell bleach. 2 to 3 times at least, I'd say. Avoid stuff like detol on things that you are going to injest.

SpanishCastleAle

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I only recently started using Starsan and used bleach up until then (I used Iodophor too but only for kegging). These are just my opinions and they may be wrong...but I wanted to at least try to answer your questions that you took the time to write.

EDIT: I'm curious why you want a sterilized hydrometer. If you take a hydro sample before the boil it doesn't need to be sanitary because you're gonna boil it. If it is after boil throw the sample away...or better yet drink it...but do not ever return it to the wort/fermenter/beer.

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Edcculus

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Agreed. If you can't access Star San (outside of the US), at LEAST get some bleach. Some members here have been using diluted bleach for years. If you are in the US, don't close the door on a great product.

AFAJ Brew Guy

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+1 Starsan and PBW are pretty much all you need. I use both of them and love it. Great products and easy to use.

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GabrielKnight

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Not helpful llama. Like 95.5% of the world's population I don't live in the US, or want to. The world doesn't revolve around the 3 chems you have access to - people have been successfully brewing for thousands of years with their own traditions, making great beers that aren't "sour". You really need to understand that there is a much bigger, more diverse world out there.

Thank you so much to SumnerH, BioBeing, SpanishCastle Ale for taking the time to help me so much. Maybe I messed up big time by:
* leaving sanitised utensils too long
* using unsanitised hands to mix stuff
* using cork bungs (but won't rubber impart a car tyre flavour?!)

I guess I thought they didn't matter as everything seemed clean att, but I've learnt my lesson. My 48 pints of barley wine are great (glugging it now!), but my Riesling is useless, nasty.

Star prize box of chocs goes to SumnerH for recognising that Detol contains chloroxylenol, and that alcohol ideally needs to be 80% or more for fast sanitation. Thumbs up ; )

There's one more possibilty of what's ruining my grog - my copper probe. The off-flavours are a bit copperish maybe, but I don't munch a lot of that particular element, so can't be sure!:
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/safety-copper-thermostat-probe-brew-108992/