solardollars

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I am impressed by all the good responses I have received just this morning. Thanks to all of you with your answers about wort chilling and my FG problems. Looks like I picked the right site for beer questions.

One more. The local beer shop charges arms and legs for this sanitizer which I believe is just kind of de-hydrated hydrogen peroxide. I think it is called One Step. She says it is no rinse and that is why it is preferable to bleach.

I HATE the idea of bleach in my beer, so I thought "Why not just buy hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol at Wal-Mart?" I have tested this theory on several batches with about 2 gallons of water, 1 quart of hydro peroxide (a buck), a quart of rubbing alcohol (another buck), and I re-use it on all 4 of my fermenters and use it yet AGAIN to clean my siphoning and bottling tubes. I just keep it in a bucket until I need to sanitize and bottle.

I have yet to get a rotten batch or any indication of contamination. We shall see.

I am open to any ideas. I know isopropyl alcohol is poisonous, but I rinse my buckets well with hot tap water and everything is clean as a whistle. I know some are fanatics about cleanliness, but I don't seem to have much problem. You would think by now I would have made a disasterous batch of beer.

El Pistolero

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Are you talking about using this solution as a cleanser, or a sanitizer? Just curious.

__________________
[/I] Up Next - Hobgoblin
After That - Czech Pilsner
Primary - Humboldt Hop Rod (4/24)
Primary - NOT Wheat AG SNCA (5/5)
Secondary -
Conditioning - SNCA Clone (3/3),

solardollars

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Pistolero........

I don't really know the difference, I guess. I thought they were the same (?)

Translation : I use it to clean up my fermenters between batches, clean my tubing, clean glass bottles prior to bottling, ALL cleaning period.

Help me understand what you are distinguishing?

El Pistolero

Recipes 

You really want to go and read How-to-Brew...if for no other reason than to just get all the terminology down.

__________________
[/I] Up Next - Hobgoblin
After That - Czech Pilsner
Primary - Humboldt Hop Rod (4/24)
Primary - NOT Wheat AG SNCA (5/5)
Secondary -
Conditioning - SNCA Clone (3/3),

Trrance

Recipes 

I'm new at this brewing thing too, so take this for what it's worth. Let me do a little math.

A buck for peroxide and another buck for alcohol = $2 for 2 gallons of questionable sanitizer.

$10 for an 8 oz. bottle of Star San divided by 16 (one half ounce makes 2.5 gallons) = $0.625 for 2.5 gallons of sanitizer with no questionable attributes and no rinsing required.

FWIW.

david_42

Recipes 

Two for a nickel, three for a dime!
Half off sale! The price you see is half the price you pay!

__________________
Remember one unassailable statistic, as explained by the late, great George Carlin: "Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!"

budbo

Recipes 

holy crap! I thought my LHBS (only one in a city of 800K) was over priced.. I get 32oz bottles of Starsan for $16 from him