using hydro peroxide, rubbing alcohol

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.

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

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?

solardollars said:

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?

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

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.

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

$10 for an 8 oz. bottle of Star San

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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