Best Sanitation Practices

I'm still pretty new to brewing, and my last few brews have taken me 12-14 hours. About half of that time is spent sanitizing. I haven't had any infections yet (knock wood), but I fear I may be OVER-SANITIZING. My procedure:
Make a 5-gallon batch of Star San, drop all of my equipment in it.
Make a 5-gallon batch of PBW and wash each of my three keggles, transferring water by auto-siphon to the next in line until all three are clean.
(Start mash water, mash, start sparge water, sparge, boil.)
Rinse each carboy with bleach water, then auto-siphon to next.
Rinse bleach with tap water, then auto-siphon Star San through each carboy.
Dump "dirty" Star San, make new 5-gallon batch, put all tools in it.
(Transfer/chill wort to carboy.)
Use Hose to rinse keggles, followed by PBW wash.
Rinse all other tools in Star San, dump.
(Pitch, go to sleep.)

I'm obviously worried about sanitization. I'm certain that I'm overshooting in some areas, but also concerned that I can never actually get into my hoses to clean those out. Thoughts, suggestions?

Thanks!

Wow, that sounds like overkill. Better safe than sorry.

I am a lazy brewer and use One Step, I know it isn't as strong as PBW/Star San but I've never had an infection.

I usually just make 3 gallon and quick clean the carboys and all my gear.

I clean after brewing and sanitize during. Everything on the hot side gets rinsed in hot water and maybe some manual cleaning with a wet paper towel. Things on the cold side get the oxiclean or PBW treatment. While brewing, I give everything a quick rinse to remove dust, and things on the cold side get submerged or sprayed with StarSan just prior to use. I have a 2-gallon bucket of StarSan, and a small spray bottle - that's all that's needed.

Star San can be reused if used on clean gear.

While my mash is going I heat my sparge water and mix up 2.5 Gallons of Star San in the Carboy. I roll it around every few minutes during the boil.

While my wort is chilling I rack the Star San out of the Carboy and into a bucket and a wall paper tray using my auto siphon. My longer items (Auto Siphone, thief, etc..) go into the bucket and my hoses and yeast packs go into the wall paper tray. I also fill a spray bottle.

When wort is chilled, I spray the Carboy mouth and rack into it.

Sanitizing is something you can do during the "down" times of a brew day: Mashing, waiting for water to heat.

Doing bleach then Star San is not only a waste of time and materials, but it's also dangerous! When bleach and star San mix a very poisonous gas is released!

Overkill for sure.

Relax...dont worry...have a homebrew.

I use starsan to sanitize exactly three things: my carboy, my airlock, and my stopper. Everything else gets heat sanitized as part of the boil. Sanitation is extremely important, but make sure you're not sanitizing things that you don't need to. 6 hours of cleaning is very, very excessive.

MalFet said:

I use starsan to sanitize exactly three things: my carboy, my airlock, and my stopper. Everything else gets heat sanitized as part of the boil. Sanitation is extremely important, but make sure you're not sanitizing things that you don't need to. 6 hours of cleaning is very, very excessive.

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THIS. Except that I use a bucket, so for me it's bucket & airlock.

Yeah, skip the bleach. I can do a 5 gallon batch and be done around noon if I start no later than 8:00 AM, and I don't cut corners on any sanitizing.

If I'm understanding you, you're sanitizing your brewing tools after you use them - that is completely unnecessary. Sanitize items shortly before you use them. Afterwards, clean them and put them away.

+1 on the comments above about using bleach and sanitizer, that's unnecessary.

What you need to sanitize will depend upon your process. For example, while te wort is chilling, I sanitize a funnel that I use while pitching the yeast.

If using a no-rinse/wet contact sanitizer like iodophor or starsan you should always sanitize fresh, and leave things wet. You should sanitize on bottling day (or brew day if you are brewing.) It only takes a few minutes. If you let a no-rinse, wet contact sanitizer like starsan or iodophor, dry your are reducing it's efficacy by half. If it is dry, any micro organisms that touch the surface render it no longer sanitized. If the walls are wet with sanitizer, that organism would be toast. But dry it would still be alive.

There's a lot of great info in this thread, including the links to podcasts about the two most effective sanitizers we use, iodophor and starsan.

Sanitizer Question.

Sanitization is important, but paranoia isn't. It really important to realize that this is a hobby, it's meant to be fun, and most importantly, it's really hard to f-this brewing up. The yeast (who are in charge, not us) manage to make beer regardless of the crap we do to it.

I'm not saying you don't pay attention to basic good sanitization practices, but just don't think you need to wear a body condom to brew.

Here, read this, Revvy's advice for the new brewer in terms of worry. You might find the info and advice helpful....And see what we've all done to our beers in this thread, What are some of the mistakes you made...where your beer still turned out great?

MalFet said:

6 hours of cleaning is very, very excessive.

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thats a whole brew day man! put down the bottle of bleach and have a homebrew.

I use idophor at the proper no-rinse concentration, 3ml/gal. 2 Minute soak via an egg timer, then sandwiched between paper towels spritzed with starsan, till needed. Cornys and snake fermenters get a 2 gallons sloshed around for 2 minutes and turned bottom up, whole process is less than 5 minutes.
Bottles get sprizted with around a dozen strokes with that bottle neck pump gizmo the lhbs sells and dry on a bottle tree spritzed with starsan, this take a little longer about 15 minutes/case.
If I had 6 hours invested in this, my hobby would be sanitizing, not homebrewing.

think of it like this.. before the boil you just want things clean, you don't need sanitizer as the wort that touches this stuff is going to be boiled for an hour. Anything that touches the post-boil wort should be sanitized by being part of the boil or with sanitizer. I don't spend any extra time sanitizing things, I take a few minutes during the boil to dump some sanitizer into my carboy and I put my airlock and stopper in the sanitizer while I wait. The chiller and all the tubing I use for getting the wort from the kettle to the carboy get boiling wort circulated through them for 10-15 minutes before flameout.

I'm putting together my gear now, and have ball valves on the kettle and MT. I'm going to use those camlock QDs, and was thinking QD w/MPT>brass 90 elbow>1/2 barb>hose and then just open hose on the other end. Gravity drop to kettle, and gravity drop from kettle to fermenter, etc.

How should I be sanitizing these hoses? I'm not doing any recirculating, and the hose wouldn't be connected to the kettle during boil. I'm thinking there's lots of crevasses/threads in there from the QD to the hose. Should I just soak the assembly? Or be taking the fittings apart each time? scrubbing?

Thinking of that, what about the QD connection past the ball in the valve?

For the hoses, you should soak those in starsan before you use them. Good point on the fitting/crevasses.. make sure you scrub those out after you use them. I wouldn't take them apart each time, that's beyond my threshold of work. I don't have any camlock thread/fittings that don't see boiling wort before they're used.
On your last question about the camlock QD attached to the ball valve, my guess is that the metal heats to near boiling temps through conduction and will essentially sanitize itself. During the boil, if the cam lock fitting is too hot to touch, you can be fairly certain that there's nothing living in there that will harm your beer.

I may leave a barb on, and then just put the hose on when i need it. Seems wrong to keep putting a hose on and off a barb every time.

ere109 said:

1) Make a 5-gallon batch of Star San, drop all of my equipment in it.
2) Make a 5-gallon batch of PBW and wash each of my three keggles, transferring water by auto-siphon to the next in line until all three are clean.
3) (Start mash water, mash, start sparge water, sparge, boil.)
4) Rinse each carboy with bleach water, then auto-siphon to next.
5) Rinse bleach with tap water, then auto-siphon Star San through each carboy.
6) Dump "dirty" Star San, make new 5-gallon batch, put all tools in it.
7) (Transfer/chill wort to carboy.)
8) Use Hose to rinse keggles, followed by PBW wash.
9) Rinse all other tools in Star San, dump.
10) (Pitch, go to sleep.)

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A) If you clean your keggles with PBW at the end of brewing why do you do it again at the beginning?
B) Why use bleach at all if you're just going to rinse in star san any way?
C) 12 - 14 hrs? Do you do each step in series? Try doing things in parallel.

I would eliminate steps 2, 4, 6 as they are redundant. It's just as important to deal with sanitation on the back end: pitching/starters, transfer tubing, racking canes, bottling equipment, caps etc.

if there is one thing i do not cut corners it is sanitizing and cleaning. cleaning is more important then sanitizing because if it is not clean it can not be sanitized. whether you can see it or not there is a fat and protein deposit left by the beer. that deposit is an acidic deposit. so to remove a acidic deposit you would use a caustic or a caustic deposit by using a acid cleaner. every once in a while you need to do acid cleaning to remove any deposits left by your caustic cleaner. i use a clean in place brewer cleaner which i have not seen sold in any homebrew shops except mine. of course mailing it would cost a lot with hazardous material charges, but my customers say it is better then anything that they have previously tried. since you can not sanitize with a deposit, it needs to be removed. so my procedure is manual clean to remove all the loose stuff, then caustic cleaning. of course it must be rinsed well also. i would suggest cleaning after using especially if you are cleaning plastic. why would you want bacteria growing on the porous material while it is stored. i usually sterilize after use also for the same reason.

when i bring it out to use i then sanitize just before i use the equipment if it has remained clean. it is an extra step but i believe you should not cut corners on you sanitizing. i prefer iodine over anything else. my suggestion is to break up all the procedures and if you clean chemically after use all that is already done when you make your next batch. i have had people tell me that iodine stains their bucket, but when the stain goes from the beer level down and not on top but was filled to the top. then the iodine is staining a deposit that you did not see before the staining.also you can get things together in the previous days before the brew and do your cleaning then. i would even sanitize the day before and let it dry upside down because for the most part bacteria do not fall up unless there are air currents. if you try some of these things i think your brew day could be cut in half but still the work is done just not on brew day except cleaning and if you want sanitizing at least for the plastic in your fermenting equipment after use.

i personally wold not use chlorine in my brewery. it leaves a salt deposit that affects the flavor ot the beer. let a bottle dry and check the inside of it for a white salt deposit. in fact i would not use chlorinated water to brew with unless it has been charcoal filtered. the flavor threshold is in parts per billion and the bandaid taste is terrible.

Thanks again for all the replies. Last night I finished a corny keg of beer, and this morning I racked my lager to secondary. I'm still temped to overkill. I wanted to tear the corny down (after having torn it down and cleaned it before this use). Instead, I used a knife to push the poppet valve open and poured straight hot water from my hot water tank through that, filled the corny, rolled it, set it upside down with the hot water in there.
Then I racked my beer, rinsed carboys twice to get major deposits before I used a carboy brush to get rid of gunk, then I filled them both with a batch of bleach that's soaking now. I'll let that soak another 20 minutes and rinse.
So, would it be advantageous to add some Star San, then put a bung over the carboys? Would that save me from having to clean them out next time before use?

ere109 said:

So, would it be advantageous to add some Star San, then put a bung over the carboys? Would that save me from having to clean them out next time before use?

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As long as you clean everything before storage, you should only need to sanitize before next use.

ere109 said:

So, would it be advantageous to add some Star San, then put a bung over the carboys?

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You can get mold that way. Store the carboys dry and upside down if you can, then all you'll need is a quick rinse with some water and they'll be ready to sanitize.

And I strongly suggest not using bleach any more.

Thanks everyone. Especially for that link to brewing disasters. I think I may just allow myself to relax a little the next time, maybe get myself down to 8 hours.

ere109 said:

Thanks everyone. Especially for that link to brewing disasters. I think I may just allow myself to relax a little the next time, maybe get myself down to 8 hours.

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Repeat after me:

1) Clean after using
2) Sanitize before using

You need do nothing more.

i would not use boiling water to poure into the keg to sanitize, because the temperature will drop quickly. if you can assure it will remain hot enough for long enough then it is acceptable, but just pouring it in and rolling i am not so sure. if it is not clean it will take even a longer time for sanitizing.