forgot starsan....bleach mixture

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nchomebrew

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dagnabit, just got back from the lhbs and i forgot my cleaning solution. wanna bottle later today. did i hear someone say you can make a bleach mixture to clean/sanitize?
i get so excited when i am surrounded by beer making ingredients, i'd forget my head if it wasn't attached.
 
whoops, just read one of the title threads. there is a "hot water, no detergent" method. i always soak my bottle in hot water, and also rinse them in hot water, would that suffice?
 
one cap full per gallon of water, the bottles must be bone dry though. Bleach is not a "no-rinse sanitizer", it will work great just make sure you do not use too much and be sure the bottles are dry.

placing them upside down in the top rack of your dish washer works great.
 
1oz of bleach per 5 gallons of water will make a no-rinse solution at 80ppm if the pH is below 8. As for getting the pH below 8, 1 oz of distilled vinegar will do the trick but only add this after the bleach has been mixed into the water. I am not responsible if you add the vinegar to the bleach directly and gas yourself out of the room.
 
1oz of bleach per 5 gallons of water will make a no-rinse solution at 80ppm if the pH is below 8. As for getting the pH below 8, 1 oz of distilled vinegar will do the trick but only add this after the bleach has been mixed into the water. I am not responsible if you add the vinegar to the bleach directly and gas yourself out of the room.

Yesssss this is exactly what I was looking for! Where did you hear this from? I listen to the Basic Brewing Radio podcasts sometimes and the host talked with the inventor of StarSan. He was actually preaching about how well a bleach/water/vinegar solution works for sanitizing and almost no one uses it because bleach is the boogey man.

I was wanting to ask, has anyone ever tried using the mixture described above? I was going to use this idea because it is supposed to be no rinse, and has a contact time of something pretty brief (2 minutes maybe?)
 
Yesssss this is exactly what I was looking for! Where did you hear this from? I listen to the Basic Brewing Radio podcasts sometimes and the host talked with the inventor of StarSan. He was actually preaching about how well a bleach/water/vinegar solution works for sanitizing and almost no one uses it because bleach is the boogey man.

I was wanting to ask, has anyone ever tried using the mixture described above? I was going to use this idea because it is supposed to be no rinse, and has a contact time of something pretty brief (2 minutes maybe?)
Yeah thats Charlie Talley's formula, 2 min should be plenty of contact time. I have never personally used that because I have never ran out of star san, but I did note the formula so that if I ever found myself in a pinch I could use it. He said anything more than 1oz per 5 gal of water isn't necessary for sanitizing and adding more won't help you at all, you simply need to get the pH below 8. I do use a bit more when cleaning with bleach, but then I am not interested in its ability to sanitize.
 
Can you remember if he said anything about how much chlorine is not good to have in your beer? What ppm of chlorine will affect how your beer turns out? I noticed that the water breakdown for some regions in England have a chlorine ppm of over 200 I think. I know this gives them a certain characteristic flavor, but when does this chlorine become a problem, and how does it change the taste?
 
Relax man, just do that Tondef said

1oz of bleach per 5 gallons of water will make a no-rinse solution at 80ppm if the pH is below 8. As for getting the pH below 8, 1 oz of distilled vinegar will do the trick but only add this after the bleach has been mixed into the water. I am not responsible if you add the vinegar to the bleach directly and gas yourself out of the room.
 
yes, good advice. i wonder why more people don't use it? its got to be cheaper than starsan and iodophor
 
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