RBlagojevich

Recipes 

neither.

it's pretty silly to buy star san OR iodophor, when a tablespoon of bleach plus a tablespoon of vinegar works equally well, and it's no-rinse necessary at that density...

RBlagojevich

Recipes 

careful not to mix the vinegar and bleach directly though (poison gas!)

Brau_Haus

Recipes 

Just a side note....My wife is in the medical field, and I brought up this particular question with her. From her professional opinion, do you really need the extra iodine in your system? Even if the Idophor (or whichever iodine based sanitizer you use) is in trace amounts, and does not affect taste at all, it still puts trace amounts of iodine into the beer that we are going to be consuming. Since there is salt in almost everything, and that salt is generally speaking already iodized, do you really want to be adding even more iodine to your system?

lamarguy

Recipes 

Ha....Got anything else you'd like to sell me? Perhaps, a US Senate seat?

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Doggfather Brewery

Planned: Lambic, American IPA
Fermenting: 6 gals of 1.090 stout (Belgian) & 6 gals of 1.090 stout (English)
Tapped: Berliner Weisse, Black English IPA, German Pils, & Live Oak Primus

FlyingHorse

Recipes 

"At that density" implies a certain amount of water. How much?

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Hegh

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Are you sure that's no-rinse? And if so, are you sure it's still a sanitizer at that concentration? Vinegar is only pH 2.4, so in a 5 gallon solution...

log (1 / (1 / (10^2.4) / (5 gallons * 256 tbsp/gallon))) = 5.5

I don't know that the acidity of your acidulated bleach solution is low enough to kill anything.

Plus, the sanitizing concentration for bleach is 1 part bleach in 10 parts water, so 1 tbsp bleach in 1280 tbsp (5 gallons) of water is no where near enough.

I'm not a chemist, though, so correct me if I got that wrong.

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Triple Cat Brewery

Primary: Summer RyePA
Tertiary: Strawberry Blond
On Tap: NB's Oatmeal Stout, Eagle Mills Hard Cider, Hefeweizen, Black Lager, Warsteiner Dunkel Clone

"Bravery is not a function of fire power." ~J.C. Denton

lamarguy

Recipes 

Sure...At a particularly innocuous concentration (parts per million), pick your poison:

• iodine - readily sublimes (vaporizes)
• phosphoric acid - readily breaks down in the presence of organic compounds
• ammonia (quat) - readily breaks down in the presence of organic compounds
• chlorine - oxides everything in its path!
• ...

The only compound on the list I regularly avoid is chlorine.

__________________
Doggfather Brewery

Planned: Lambic, American IPA
Fermenting: 6 gals of 1.090 stout (Belgian) & 6 gals of 1.090 stout (English)
Tapped: Berliner Weisse, Black English IPA, German Pils, & Live Oak Primus

Hegh

Recipes 

Not all salt is iodized. I use kosher salt for almost all of my cooking, and it is definitely *not* iodized.

__________________
Triple Cat Brewery

Primary: Summer RyePA
Tertiary: Strawberry Blond
On Tap: NB's Oatmeal Stout, Eagle Mills Hard Cider, Hefeweizen, Black Lager, Warsteiner Dunkel Clone

"Bravery is not a function of fire power." ~J.C. Denton

Brau_Haus

Recipes 

Thank you, Hegh. I have corrected the original post.

Fair enough. I thought I'd toss it out there. Between the information I've been collecting here, as well as bouncing it off of my wife, I've been getting quite an education.

But if the amounts are so innocuous, wouldn't the minimal amounts of chlorine also be subsequently forced to bond with the ions in the beer, thus stopping the oxidation process?

kaiser423

Recipes 

I would bet ya that stored star san is still cheaper, oh and I use star san to bottle because I like the idea of the yeasties eating it and only leaving beer. I'm not looking for vinegary-bleachy beer anytime in my near future.

For less than 25 cents a batch, I'll stick with my star san. Silly? Please; it's silly to try and save a quarter and end up not even sanitizing your bottles, not getting the job done, and hence just ingesting bleach for fun. THAT seems silly to me.