Sanitation and I am not talking Garbage men

I was wondering:

I am looking at starting and buying a beginners kit. Does bleach and water work well for sanitation or should I go with EasyClean or StarSan. I have heard bleach leaves a Band-Aid taste.

thanks

Bleach works as long as you are good about rinsing. I prefer Star San though... respect the bubbles.

Yep. Any bleach left behind can make your beer taste like band-aids. Not a good thing. I also prefer starsan.

In light of there being so many better no-rinse sanitizers like iodophor and starsan out these days, the problem with using bleach on a regular basis, while at the same time using municipal water, certain minerals in whatever water you use and certain plastics, is that you could build up chloramines in your brewing systems, which could contribute to off flavors in your beer.

In some situations they work cumulatively by having little bits of chlorine in different parts of the brewing process that your beer may come in contact with, and it builds up and bammo plastic band aid flavor.

It's best to avoid chlorine as much as possible, and in the case of sanitizing ONLY in the most dire situations, like where you know for sure you have an infection.....we call it slash and burning.

I try to limit the amount of contact my gear comes to chlorine and chlorine products.

Chloramines are funny that way, some folks aren't affected, and in other situations the right combination causes it.

So it's best to reduce contact, especially with plastic gear, as much as possible.

You'll find a lot of good info/tips to effective sanitization here; https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/sanitizer-question-54932/

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Thank you

On the other hand, many people have used bleach for years
with no problems.

Ray

rayg said:

On the other hand, many people have used bleach for years
with no problems.

Ray

Click to expand...

And some have done it once and have experienced problems...I didn't shoot it down, I do believe I said "in light of..." and "in some circmstances....." And especially this;

Chloramines are funny that way, some folks aren't affected, and in other situations the right combination causes it.

Click to expand...

ANd if he follows my link to the uber sanitization thread he's going to find the great podcast by Chuck Talley, inventor of Starsan doing a great basic brewing episode titles "Sanitizing with Bleach AND Starsan," which spends half of the podcast talking about using bleach in a positive light, BUT also talking about chloramines and such....

The first batch of beer I made I used straight tap water. My city uses chloramines and you can definitely taste a sort of medicinal aftertaste in the nose after tasting it. For some reason it becomes very apparent when burping. It doesn't wreck the beer at all but it is there. If people say they don't have that problem they may in fact have it but just not notice.

Now I put about 1/16tsp of k-meta in my tap water and it seems to have fixed it on my second batch. It is definitely missing that medicinal taste. We'll see how the other two come out to confirm. In any case it's cheap and easy insurance.

As has been said there are way better alternatives for sanitizing than bleach. Personally I use Starsan.