Easy Clean/One Step
 

So I swore I'd go through this stuff before getting Star San, and it does an OK enough job of sanitizing and blah blah blah, but I'm getting impatient. I want my star san now, so my question is, properly diluted (1 TBSP per 1 gallon) can just use it as my cleanser? It won't be abrasive right? Eventually I'll make the PBW and Star San switch, I'm just not one for wasting something that does work.

Star San is magical. I use it on my kettles and fermenters. They'll go from a dark, sticky malty brown. I should really take a before and after picture of my SS kettle. it goes from filmy brown to totally shiny stainless again. It kills anything on contact, but you do want to get any gunk out first. As far as a cleanser goes? I'm not sure. It really only sanitizes. But after what Revvy has said about it, I just use it to cleanse and sani. It is easy and worth the extra money. Also a big container of the stuff lasts a long time.

I used One Step on everything (including buckets) for years before switching to an Oxyclean/Starsan combo. Never found it to be abrasive. If you want to make the switch, OneStep makes a fine cleanser, or you can just use what you have left in a soak to take labels off.

Well, if my results from yesterday hold true, I have a great beer glass cleaner as well. Soaked a small amount in a glass and soaked it for half an hour and scrubbed it with a brush and it looked brand new.

I scrub each bottle with starsan right before I bottle and cap it. Haven't had a nasty beer yet.

Well my issue is I want to use the stuff I have now, and currently I brew both on my own and with my brother but we share a bucket and all that jazz, so I'd like a somewhat uniform cleaning process for my own sanity. What I would like to do but I'm just a little scared of is using the easy clean as my cleanser to get rid of all the grime and then using to star san to sanitize. I don't really want to use star san for both because of the cost. And since 90% of cleaning is light work I wouldn't want to use my good stuff when I can get a 5 pound bucket of Easy Clean for less than a 32 oz bottle of Star San.

1 oz of star San gets you 5 gallons of cleaning agent. Its really not that bad. Start rinsing your bottles after you pound one with warm tap water. Wash them in your dishwasher without soap. Then just do a star San rinse and run the bottle brush through each bottle before bottling. I have my schedule setup to where I brew a batch and bottle a batch on the same day. So you'll really only need an ounce of starsan once in a while.its cheaper than dumping an infected batch!

I keep star San in a spray bottle now and have been using it to clean my beer glasses now. Just rinse them spray them with starsan and let it sit a minute or so and I rinse them again and dry the glass with a bar towel. Works better than my dishwasher or anything else I have washed glasses with. Stuff is crazy amazing.