o2 caps activated by star-san?

A while ago that was the prevailing idea. Now, I think it's been debunked, and you can sanitize them like normal. At least, I do.

I don't know about what Hammy said, BUT the thing to realize is that it doesn't matter if they get activated when soaking them or not, if you're putting the right on the bottles.

Soaking them is what activates the oxygen absorbing magic. It actually takes a week for them to do their job on the bottle.

On Basic brewing James Spencer contacted the maker of Oxygen Absorbing Caps (Crown Beverage), and actually recommended you santize them quickly, evidently the "Oxygen Absorbing Effect" of the caps is not immediate and they need to be wet for a period of time before the magic happens, like days.

Click to listen

It's within the first few minutes of the podcast.

They recommend sanitizing ONLY the caps you are using, and sanitizing just before bottling.

So go ahead an soak away!!!

Thanks for clearing this up. I've heard/read mixed things about this and never knew what to believe.

I was thinking about ordering some and using the technique Revvy describes above: quickly sanitizing before placing on the bottle instead of soaking the caps for a longer period. I was a little hesitant about the whole thing, but may give them a try now.

I ccan't understand why anyone would sell a product for homebrewing that touches beer and SHOULDN'T be sanitized.

This helps.

From this this thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/oxygen-absorbing-caps-89570/

Austinhomebrew said:

You are doing yourself and your beer a disservice. No brewery sanitizes their caps. The alcohol in the beer will kill any contaminates. You need to cap and then invert for the oxy caps to work. If you sanitize them you lose the oxygen absobing properties.

Oxygen barrier and Oxygen absorbing caps are the same. Everyone sells the same caps from the same distributors.

Forrest

Click to expand...

Bithead said:

From this this thread https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/oxygen-absorbing-caps-89570/

Click to expand...

He forgets a) That commercial beer usually passes through some form of pasturization process after it's bottled on the line. Which would kill off anything, just like a sanitizer does.

B) He gets things wrong sometimes. Like Hammy was saying in HIS post that prevaling notion was debunked.

I stick with what the MANUFACTURER of the them says to do, as chronicled in the link I posted above and reported by James Spenser.