star-san

howdy everyone,
I've just stared to use star-san for a sanitizer. just a question that I hope someone might be able to help with.... If I have cleaned using one-step then use star-san in my kegs, can I just leave the star-san in the kegs till it is time to rack to them from secondary?, or should I drain the kegs and close them back up empty instead? Any feed back would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

I would drain them and air dry before sealing them up. The Starsan is slightly acidic and it may not be a good idea to leave it in the keg for a extended length of time.
If it isn't going to be an extended length of time, say a week or so, It shouldn't hurt anything to leave them filled.

Yeah, I don't keep star san just sitting in my kegs. I do keep it in my spare carboys, though.

I not only leave some starsan in my kegs, I store several gallons of it in a spare keg. Been there for many months with no sign of a problem.

Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?pagenumber=2&perpage=15&threadid=10932

Charles Talley said:

[FONT=verdana, arial, helvetica]Star San is based on phosphoric acid, being an acid is is very friendly to s/s.[/FONT]

Click to expand...

Ditto. I keep Star San on tap for up to 6 months in the same keg. Never had a problem..YMMV

I am actually using 2 month old star san in my kegs right now. I have let it sit in a keg for up to 3 weeks. When one keg goes empty I rinse it out and hook up my keg of star san to the tap and pump all of the star san from the star san keg into the recently emptied keg. I then fill with beer the keg that until a few moments ago had the star san in it. I keep up this rotation which allows me to quickly clean and sterilize my kegs just by shaking them once the star san is in there.

I only have to fully scrub out the kegs after about 2 or 3 full rotations, it works out well, especially considering I have 8 kegs.

Funkenjaeger said:

I not only leave some starsan in my kegs, I store several gallons of it in a spare keg. Been there for many months with no sign of a problem.

Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.realbeer.com/discussions/showthread.php?pagenumber=2&perpage=15&threadid=10932

Click to expand...

yep me too.

Thanks guys for the input. I relly like the thread to realbeer.com. This has put my mind at ease and will just leave it be for a couple more weks till it's rdy to rack from secondary.

Listen to this podcast it is Charley Talley the inventor of Star San was interviewed. It is kind of long but very interesting. http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/archive/search.php?story=star+san&dosearch=yes

hmpitags,
That was an awsome podcast. Yes it is quite long but it thoroughly put any and all
of my worries to rest. Listening to the inventor (chemist Charlie Tulley) talk about his product and a few others was very enlightening. Thanks for the link.
ps. everyone should know that they need the ability to listen to a MP3 podcast. I would recomend this to all those who have any questions about sanitation and the 5 |Star product line.

I, too, have left star san in a keg for a loooong time. No issues.