Sanitizing question

Hi, all. I've just started both beer and wine making. For the wine, I'm using a bottle tree and rinse-free potassium metabisulfite to sanitize the bottles before brewing. For the beer, however, I'm using pink powder for a contact time of 20 minutes, then rinsing them before bottling.

It seems like the wine sanizitizing is a lot easier. Can I use the same sanitizer for the beer bottles that I use for the wine bottles? I'm using plastic bottles for beer.

Thanks!

From what I read potassium metabisulfite is not good for beer. You would be better off trying a no rinse sanitizer like Star San, I have read that it is great, and I just ordered some for myself.

Wup

Okay, thanks. If there's any risk to the beer, I won't try it. Don't want to ruin a whole batch because of my laziness...

I've been using One step for both. I used One step for wines, and when I started making beer a couple of months ago, I just used it since that's what I had and I was familiar with it. Everything has been working great so far.

Lorena

Thanks, lorenae. I think I might try that. Do you use it to sanitize everything or just the bottles? What contact time do you use?

I use it to sanitize everything- the fermenters, carboy, airlock, spoon, siphon/racking tubing, bottling stuff, caps, etc. It's easier for me, since I made wine first and was very comfortable with one-step. I buy it in bulk, and it's not too expensive that way.

I'm going to put some in a spray bottle to make it easier to coat the surfaces (that's an idea from this board). I don't time the contact time- it's pretty long because I clean and then sanitize the bucket and then put all the stuff in that while I get other things ready. When I do the bottles, I clean the kitchen sink then pour the sanitizer from my bottling bucket into the sink and then put my bottles in there. I fill the bottles, by standing them up in the sink and pouring sanitizer into them. The sink still has sanitizer in it while I do this, and then after they sit a while (while I rack and/or boil my priming sugar) then I take them out and let them dry and do a few more. I do about 10 or 12 at a time. I line them up on the kitchen island, then open the dishwasher and fill 10 or 15 bottles at a time on the dishwasher door. That contains the drips.

I'm sure you'll hear of many other ways to do this- some more efficient and cheaper. But this works for me.

Lorena

I use bleach, is that bad ?

Bleach isn't bad - just probably more of a pain. It's possible if you're not careful to have a bleachy tasting brew. All my old books say to use bleach, so a lot of people have done it for a long time.

The newer products that are out aren't much more expensive than bleach and do a great job - plus, you don't have to rinse when you're done.

Thanks again, lorenae. I gotta get some One Step!