Dirty Equipment

So I have been out of the brewing game for a while and all my gear has been sitting in a shed. Well I opened the coffin freezer that most of it was stored in and what did I find but a cardboard box growing. Apparently gallon of water was in the freezer also and the whole thing looked like a jungle. The stainless and all. I broke out a spray bottle and a lot of bleach and began spraying. A gallon of bleach and 2 gallons of water later everything was covered and soaking. I took all the small components and put them in a keg and soaked then in a bleach water mix overnight. Nasty is all I can say tonight I pulled the kegs apart and every pickup tube was full also. It will all be clean and ready by then end of the night and bring on the brewing. To bad I have to wait until Christmas to get the last bit of stuff I need. The agreement for me getting back into brewing is I get the burner and final bit of stuff I need from the kids for Christmas.

Good to see you're getting back into it. Good luck with your brews, and I hope you don't have too hard of a time getting all your stuff back together!

If you want to get it REALLY clean, since bleach can only do so much, purchase some PBW. Follow the instructions on it (I think it's about 1oz/gallons of water) fill your equipment to the brim with that and hot water, and let it soak for about 45 minutes. That stuff does miracles and it can make nearly any mess into a brand new pot or fermenter!

Be careful with long term exposure of SS to chlorine. It will damage the SS finish.

I plan on getting pbw and some idofor also. I just wanted the junk puffy of it for now

What do u guys think about starsan ???

markymosh said:

What do u guys think about starsan ???

Click to expand...

Star san is used for sanitizing, not cleaning. Stick with the PBW/Oxyclean, rinse well and then hit with the star san afterwards. One of the homebrew books states it best: You can't sanitize dirt.

markymosh said:

What do u guys think about starsan ???

Click to expand...

Starsan does not seem to do much on mold, at least for me.

Lesson here is to always prop a freezer lid open a few inches during storage to avoid a moldy mess....

Good luck with the cleanup and welcome back!

westo2 said:

Star san is used for sanitizing, not cleaning. Stick with the PBW/Oxyclean, rinse well and then hit with the star san afterwards. One of the homebrew books states it best: You can't sanitize dirt.

Click to expand...

westo2 is dead on. Cleaning and sanitising are two separate steps and need different products. If you don't start with clean surfaces, all the Star San in the world isn't going do to ****e.

I use 1.5ozs of PBW per gallon of water to soak things clean. It'll get the mold to float away in no time,leaving clean surfaces. Great stuff for serious cleaning. A light brushing or swipe with a soft cloth will do the rest on the softened gunk. Then rinse with hot water & sanitize. I like Starsan,it's the best for no rinse sanitizing!

Thanx guys that really helps I'm pretty new to brewing and learning fast I've been using oxyclean for the most part and starsan just before I brew my last batch tasted great and I had no mold so far so good