Do you rinse Star-San?

A guy that my brother-in-law works with is a very experienced, and very accomplished homebrewer (wins more competitions than anyone I know, BJCP judge, one of very few BJCP instructors in Canada, etc., etc.). Anyways, after ALWAYS rinsing star-san out of his bottles, he now decided to not bother. It is supposed to be a 'no-rinse' sanitizer, after all. But now he claims all the beer in the bottles he didn't rinse (across various batches) have a 'steely' taste, not unlike the smell of star-san.

So, does anyone bother rinsing star-san? Has anyone had problems NOT rinsing star-san? I never rinse it off anything, but then again, there are always enough flaws in my beers that I wouldn't notice this 'steely' taste.

Of course, now me, my brother-in-law, and his co-worker are all going to brew up a batch, bottle part of it, and rinse only half of the bottles sanitized with star-san to see what's up.

Never rinsed the stuff. Never noticed any off flavors in my beer. If it is mixed according to the instructions on the bottle you should not need to rinse and there should be no noticeable affect on the beer.

Starsan Rocks!:rockin: I never rinse, I just rack on the foam.

My beer is excellent. Life is good!

It's a no rinse sanitizer. I haven't noticed any off-flavors. Why pay for a no-rinse sanitizer if you're gonna go through the trouble of rinsing it? You might as well use bleach and save the money.

Your friend might want to ease up on the amount he is using maybe.??? Dilute it a little bit more.

I always put my bottles through the dishwasher first. Run an empty cycle first without bottles to clean the dishwasher. Then bottles in, set on hi-temp wash and sanitize. THEN, i dunk them in a tub of sanitizer water and put them back on the clean dishwasher rack so they're ready to fill.

As for any off tastes, I've never noticed any.

I would think that rinsing would defeat the purpose of using the sanitizer in the first place and would greatly increase the chance of a sanitized item becoming unsanitary.

While it is a no-rinse sanitizer it will be a nice empirical determination that you, your brother, and his colleague are set to undertake. Maybe his palette is simply more sensitive than most and that's why his beers win so many competitions. I use SaniClean and Iodophor and never rinsed and haven't noticed any problems but maybe my palette isn't as sensitive as I've worked in some form of a molecular lab for 19 years and have likely fried my olfactory senses with all the volatile chemicals.

I do remember when a guy did a similar experiment with BTF Iodophor and simply diluted some into a mega-swill at different ppm from 0 to 12.5 up to 3 or 4 times that and had friends sample the beers. It wasn't until the ppm were way up there that they began to notice the iodophor but down at the recommended 12.5 ppm not a single person could smell or taste the iodophor.

Keep us posted.

Yeah, I don't rinse either, which seems to be the concensus.

And I should have also mentioned that my BIL's colleague isn't sure that the culprit of his off-tasting beers is star-san, but he highly suspects it because he can't think of anything else that has changed in his routine. He typically makes 6 gallon batches, and kegs 4 or 5, and puts the rest into bottles for competitions - the wierd part is that the kegged beer tastes perfectly fine and only the recent bottles are the ones that are 'off'.

Anyways, thanks for the feedback -- all the more reason to 'do the experiment'!

Never rinsed and I have a fairly sensitive palate; never noticed even a hint of steel or any other off flavors that I could attribute to the sanitizer. Just my own mistakes




Dan

I have an idea that might be useful. Why not save your homebrew and simply rinse and no-rinse a few bottles and go buy a Mega-swill 12 pack and pour them into your rinsed and non-rinse bottles and then taste test. Most of the mega-swills are so lacking in flavour that not many flaws can be hidden in those beers so that might be an idea to save your HB since the kegged beer tastes good. Did he stop rinsing the kegs too? Metallic ..........? Can't remember but someone here posted what might be the culprit or cause.

runhard said:

I have an idea that might be useful. Why not save your homebrew and simply rinse and no-rinse a few bottles and go buy a Mega-swill 12 pack and pour them into your rinsed and non-rinse bottles and then taste test. Most of the mega-swills are so lacking in flavour that not many flaws can be hidden in those beers so that might be an idea to save your HB since the kegged beer tastes good. Did he stop rinsing the kegs too? Metallic ..........? Can't remember but someone here posted what might be the culprit or cause.

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Yeah, that little experiment might work, too. But I am not sure whether I can bring myself to pay money for BMC swill! For now, I won't change my bottling routine except to always do a few bottles that have been rinsed for comparison.

And actually, the guy claims that he didn't rinse the kegs or bottles, yet only the bottles had the off flavour. He was thinking that it has to do with the surface-area to volume ratio (which could be valid), but I am still unsure. There are enough differences between bottling and kegging that could be the culprit (e.g., method of priming, method of washing bottles, etc.). He also admits this, but the star-san seems the likely culprit to him. But I guess we can test that hypothesis fairly easily!

Cheers

It's funny what happends when a guy gets a bee in his bonnet all of a sudden theres off flavors. I think sometimes we over think the processes we have done for a long time with good results?

I don't use Star San, but I never used to rinse Iodophor. I do now. It only took one ruined batch of Iodine tasting beer and that did it for me. They may say it's no rinse, but when it only takes about 2 minutes of extra time to rinse, I'll gladly rinse.

Beer Weevel said:

I think sometimes we over think the processes we have done for a long time with good results?

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Yup. And the number one place that homebrewers most often over engineer, rationalize and obsess over? Sanitation.

Once while during a cold crash I had a 2.5 gallon batch of blonde ale suck up about 3 cups of star-San & water that was in the blow off jar ,
I thought for sure the beer would be ruined but it turned out fine .

kornkob said:

Yup. And the number one place that homebrewers most often over engineer, rationalize and obsess over? Sanitation.

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That's nice of you, answering 14 years later

I know right ,, I didn’t catch what I did till it was to late ,, sry

I used to not rinse but now I do. I can tell the difference in the product. People who say once you rinse the sanitizer off your equipment is no longer sanitary isn't living in the real world. We are sanitizing, not sterilizing. The yeast can deal with small amounts of bacteria in the brew, you're just trying to minimize exposure. If you sanitize with StarSan and leave upside down to drain, rinse with clean non-chlorinated water immediately before bottling you'll be fine. I don't bottle anymore but I do this with carboys and kegs and have never had a problem.

The only time I rinse Star San off or out of something it's tubing when it's about to be put away...and my hands.
I never rinse something I'm about to fill with something I'll eventually consume, that'd be crazy

Cheers!