Bleach as sanitizer?

Ive heard there are people who use bleach as sanitizer out there, and im sick of paying for iodophor! Does this stuff really work? How do i use it? And is it safe for consumption no-rinse? Also wondering if itd make sense to store my carboys full of bleach water?

Let me know guys, hopefulyl this'll save me a bunch of money for grains and hops!

Bleach is DEFINATELY NOT no-rinse. You want to rinse it well or your brews will be nasty. The dilution rate is something that eludes me now, something along the lines of a tablespoon or so per 5 gallons water.

I use StarSan, mix it up, place it in a spray bottle and you will use like 1/2 quart of mixed solution per session... it is CHEAP!

You can use bleach as a no-rinse sanitizer, but it's at such a low concentration that it becomes very ineffective (i.e. it requires a very long contact time). The flavor threshold for bleach is very low, and its flavor is very unpleasant if you mess up on the dosage. The savings, to me, is not worth the hassle. $18 of Starsan lasts me for a year or more. It's cheap and it works great.

If you are too cheap to buy iodophor or Starsan you can use bleach but it is not a no-rinse sanitiser. Bleach also takes longer to work so you need a much longer contact time than iodine products. A small bottle of iodophor lasts a long time, doesn't cost all that much, is very fast acting and can be mixed as a no-rinse solution. I do use bleach for cleaning glass carboys. A couple of ounces and fill with water followed by just letting them soak. It's easy and low maintenance but I still rinse the hell out of them afterwards and then use iodophor to sanitize before using. It's up to you but to me the advantages of modern sanitizing products have it all over bleach.

Sorry Pol have to interject.

According to Charlie Talley bleach can be no-rinse as long as it is acidulated (vinegar) but it does not have a good shelf life and it has to be highly diluted.

For more seek out Basic Brewing podcast with Five Star.

BTW, Star San is no-rinse and has an extremely long shelf life when mixed with distilled or even reverse osmotified. I've had 5 gallons stay at proper pH for nearly 2 years.

GilaMinumBeer said:

Sorry Pol have to interject.

According to Charlie Talley bleach can be no-rinse as long as it is acidulated (vinegar) but it does not have a good shelf life and it has to be highly diluted.

For more seek out Basic Brewing podcast with Five Star.

BTW, Star San is no-rinse and has an extremely long shelf life when mixed with distilled or even reverse osmotified. I've had 5 gallons stay at proper pH for nearly 2 years.

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Okay, I recant... for anyone normal, bleach is not no-rinse

BrewTaster said:

Ive heard there are people who use bleach as sanitizer out there, and im sick of paying for iodophor! Does this stuff really work? How do i use it? And is it safe for consumption no-rinse? Also wondering if itd make sense to store my carboys full of bleach water?

Let me know guys, hopefulyl this'll save me a bunch of money for grains and hops!

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How much iodophor are you using? 3ml per gallon (excuse the mixed units) is all you need for no-rinse use. A small bottle of iodophor lasts me a year or more.

1ml/liter, which works out to about 4ml/gallon. Maybe i just need to be more efficient in my use of it. How big of bottles are you using?

If you dunk items in it, you will use a lot more... if you place a no rinse in a spray bottle to spray your equipment, you will use almost nothing.

The Pol said:

If you dunk items in it, you will use a lot more... if you place a no rinse in a spray bottle to spray your equipment, you will use almost nothing.

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I beleive that you sir have just explained my overusage! I feel like a moron lol.

BrewTaster said:

Ive heard there are people who use bleach as sanitizer out there, and im sick of paying for iodophor! Does this stuff really work? How do i use it? And is it safe for consumption no-rinse? Also wondering if itd make sense to store my carboys full of bleach water?

Let me know guys, hopefulyl this'll save me a bunch of money for grains and hops!

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All I use for sanitizing. It works just fine. Don't go overboard, you don't need much.

I store my carboys full of bleach water........After I clean them, I put in about 1/8 cup of bleach and 2 gallons of hot water then put the stopper in. As the water cools, it sucks the stopper in and makes an airtight seal.

I sanitize all my equipment with bleach, everything. For equipment that I'm about to use, I'll use a couple capfuls in a sink of hotwater. I'll put a couple capfuls in my buckets as well. After letting them soak, I'll rinse 'em and let them dry. Bleach is completely inert once it dries.

I'll admit it.

I'm a bleacher.

Never overly concerned with exact concentrations because I rinse everything under 135 degree tap water.

Usually for a carboy or bucket, it's 2-3 drops of dawn, a good splash of bleach, a 3 second squirt of hot water and a rub down with a soft wash clothe.

Then it's into the shop sink for a good 5-6 second rinse and upside down to drip dry.

No need to store a carboy with any sanitizer. Once it's sanitized, just store it upside down in a milk crate (lined with a paper towel) and let it dry...then plug with stopper and store.

The Pol said:

Storing a bleach solution can be an exercise in futiity since chlorine gass is pretty volitile and will evaporate,

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Chlorine gas does not evaporate out of bleach. If it did, a lot of people would be dead.

BierMuncher said:

I'll admit it.

I'm a bleacher.

Never overly concerned with exact concentrations because I rinse everything under 135 degree tap water.

Usually for a carboy or bucket, it's 2-3 drops of dawn, a good splash of bleach, a 3 second squirt of hot water and a rub down with a soft wash clothe.

Then it's into the shop sink for a good 5-6 second rinse and upside down to drip dry.

No need to store a carboy with any sanitizer. Once it's sanitized, just store it upside down in a milk crate (lined with a paper towel) and let it dry...then plug with stopper and store.

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So as long as you rinse, its all good?

Just trying to sway you here. You can reuse Star-San over and over again. Mix it up with distilled or reverse osmosis water. I have been brewing for 1.5 years and still have half a small container of Star san left. It cost me $10. So say that $10 is for 3 years, hypothetically. Therefore, $3.33 per year. If you can't afford that, you can't afford to brew.

BrewTaster said:

So as long as you rinse, its all good?

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yes...........

If time is money, Star San in a spray bottle is the way to go. A bottle of Star San will last you years, no pesky rinsing, just spray and go.

I did this math a few months ago for another thread:

96 oz of Clorox Bleach costs about $15. A concentration of 2 oz per gallon makes 192 gallons of sanitizing solution at 8 cents per gallon.

32 oz of Star San costs about $16.99. A concentration of 1 oz per 5 gallons makes 160 gallons of sanitizing solution at 11 cents per gallon.

If you sanitize with bleach, you ABSOLUTELY NEED to rinse VERY thoroughly. This costs time and water. It's not recommended to put a bleach solution into a spray bottle, so you'll need to use some sort of immersion technique for sanitizing, potentially requiring a large amount of sanitizer.

If you sanitize with Star San, you don't need to rinse. Actually, you shouldn't rinse. You can sanitize by simply spraying the solution from a spray bottle onto the surfaces you wish to sanitize, so you will potentially use very little solution for an entire batch.

So, assuming you use a gallon of sanitizer for a batch (that's A TON of spray bottle usage, or the bare minimum for immersion sanitizing), if you want to save 3 cents and do a ton of rinsing, have fun with the bleach. Star San gets my vote.

Yuri_Rage said:

...96 oz of Clorox Bleach costs about $15....

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Yeah, but 96 Oz of Walmart bleach costs about $7.00.

Yeah, if it is $.08 per gallon for bleach and $.11 for StarSan... I can use a quart of StarSan mixture per brew... you will be using GALLONS of bleach mixture, so StarSan is much cheaper, because you dont have to immerse items in it and make copious ammounts of it.

BierMuncher said:

Yeah, but 96 Oz of Walmart bleach costs about $7.00.

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True, but how many GALLONS of mixture do you make for a brew day? If you make 3 gallons to my one quart, you are using 12x as much solution as I am.

Yuri's calculations still assume you dump out Star San after one use. I have been using the same mixture for about 4 months now. No infections (unless on purpose ) to speak of.

funny how all this ranting could've been avoided by a simple use of the search function...or google.

Back in prohibition days, moonshiners would add chemicals such as bleach to their brews to give it a little extra kick...white lightning anyone?

pizzaman said:

funny how all this ranting could've been avoided by a simple use of the search function...or google.

Back in prohibition days, moonshiners would add chemicals such as bleach to their brews to give it a little extra kick...white lightning anyone?

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I dont see this thread as a rant... more like a factually based investigation as to why Idophor or StarSan would be considered expensive, when it is cheaper than any other (that I know of) method available to the average Joe.

pizzaman said:

funny how all this ranting could've been avoided by a simple use of the search function...or google.

Back in prohibition days, moonshiners would add chemicals such as bleach to their brews to give it a little extra kick...white lightning anyone?

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I don't see how moonshining has anything to do with this thread at all. We're talking about sanitation, and they usually used antifreeze to make the moonshine taste more alcohol-y.

Ok what I do, as a noob so take it as you will, I read it on here, is I use a thin bleach, which is milton fluid which is used for baby bottles etc so is safe and I add vinegar.
The proportions are 30ml bleach:30ml white vinegar to 20l of water, so it's a very thin solution. This is supposed to be no-rinse and I have used it as such once with no ill effects, but the second time I used it I rinsed under the tap. 30 seconds of contact with this is supposed to be sufficient.
I've not had problems with it so far and no chlorophenols.

That looks like what this guy is talking about.

1oz Bleach
1oz Vinegar
5gal water

I'll have to give this a shot next bottling, would effectively cut my water usage down to a mere five gallons, instead of five gallons plus whatever I end up using on rinsing.

Just be sure to mix the solution properly and DO NOT mix the vinegar directly with the bleach. I forget what it makes but, I do remember that it is nasty.

GilaMinumBeer said:

Just be sure to mix the solution properly and DO NOT mix the vinegar directly with the bleach. I forget what it makes but, I do remember that it is nasty.

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Chlorine gas.

BrewTaster said:

I beleive that you sir have just explained my overusage! I feel like a moron lol.

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I use Iodophor and I'm a dunker. I originally went with Iodophor due to the fact that it was less expensive, and that it requires such a short contact time. The problem with Iodophor is people use WAY too much of it. People will add it to water until they get a yellow or even amber color. The reality is, if you can actually see it, you're probably using too much. One Tablespoon in five gallons is all you need. That's roughly .6 teaspoons per gallon. Another mistake people make is that they feel that an item needs to be fully submersed in the sanitizer while all that's necessary is for the surface to remain wet for two minutes.

I don't brew as often as some people (certainly not as much as I'd like to), but I haven't been exactly strict with my usage, and the little bottle of Iodophor I bought a year ago still has about a third left in it. I use a plastic tub to store my brewing gadgets and such. this doubles as my washing/sanitizing tub. Once I get my stuff washed, I fill the tub with about 3 gallons of cool water and add around 2 teaspoons of Iodophor. After the utensils get their quick dunk, I pour a couple gallons into the bucket or carboy, leaving a gallon or so in the tub for the inevitable one item I forget to sanitize. With the sanitizer in the bucket or carboy I seal it up, and every 5 minutes or so I swish and roll the sanitizer to cover all the interior surfaces. I'll do this about 3 times over the course of the boil before dumping out the sanitizer.

Once I'm through this bottle I might give Star-San a try, but I have no complaints at all with Iodophor.

EDIT: nm. dfdfdfdfdfdf

The Pol said:

If you dunk items in it, you will use a lot more... if you place a no rinse in a spray bottle to spray your equipment, you will use almost nothing.

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QFT. Plus, that spray bottle is a really effective way to get iodophor into tubing without having to fight it to lay flat in a wallpaper tray. Plus, it's handy in the kitchen, too.

BrewTaster said:

I beleive that you sir have just explained my overusage! I feel like a moron lol.

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Nope, it's a trick everybody learns. I usually mix a half-gallon of iodophor on brewday, which I first use to sanitize a carboy. Then, some goes into a pan ot tray for sanitizing utensils, and the rest goes into a spray bottle. One brewday, 1.5 ml of iodophor used. Easy Peasy.

BierMuncher said:

I'll admit it.

I'm a bleacher.

Never overly concerned with exact concentrations because I rinse everything under 135 degree tap water.

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Bleach still has its place in my process, too. Every now and then, I think it's a good idea to really nuke everything (except stainless stuff) with a strong bleach solution (especially buckets). Afterward, I rinse well, then use as normal.

When I first started brewing, most home brewers used bleach, and rinsed well. The paranoid rinsed with boiled water. I always used tapwater, and didn't have a problem. Honestly, the reason I switched to iodophor was purely for the convenience of having a no-rinse sanitizer.

The Pol said:

True, but how many GALLONS of mixture do you make for a brew day? If you make 3 gallons to my one quart, you are using 12x as much solution as I am.

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I don't mix up a batch for brew day. I always have the right side of this sink filled with a mild bleach/dawn solution. All my utensils, hops bags, racking canes, etc... get dropped in here for an indefinite soak. When I get around to it, I remove, hot rinse and let drip dry.

Now and again I'll drop a fresh splash of bleach in and usually drain and refresh once a week or so.

Gotta remember I'm in my brewshop every night and most Saturdays and Sundays. I've always got some beer chores to do down there whilst watching some sports and sampling the wares. A constant pool of sanitizer is just more convenient.

pizzaman said:

That looks like what this guy is talking about.

1oz Bleach
1oz Vinegar
5gal water

I'll have to give this a shot next bottling, would effectively cut my water usage down to a mere five gallons, instead of five gallons plus whatever I end up using on rinsing.

Click to expand...

Don't kill yourself!

BierMuncher said:

I don't mix up a batch for brew day. I always have the right side of this sink filled with a mild bleach/dawn solution...

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/me druels at BierMunchers' setup.

There is no danger once you add one of the reagents to the water and then add the other, just don't mix bleach and vinegar together.

I'm not sure if it does release chlorine, but it's never advised to mix straight bleach with anything stronger than water.

I've also used this solution over two days in a large bucket, although someone on here say's that the half life is not good, I think it'll work a few days.

I hear that Star San is good as long as the PH is less than 3.5, how do you test for the PH? Just ordinary litmus tests?

OMG! DO NOT MIX VINEGAR AND BLEACH UNLESS YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOUR DOING!! Listen to the brewing network Brew-Strong podcast on sanitation. If you lower the PH too much, the solution will release chlorine gas. You will die.

Sucram said:

OMG! DO NOT MIX VINEGAR AND BLEACH UNLESS YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOUR DOING!! Listen to the brewing network Brew-Strong podcast on sanitation. If you lower the PH too much, the solution will release chlorine gas. You will die.

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Mild bleach, kitchen vinegar, 30ml:30ml in 20l of water, that's exactly how to do it, mix the bleach to the water then add the vinegar, do not mix vinegar and bleach neat.
If it scares you, then don't do it.

The Pol said:

Bleach is DEFINATELY NOT no-rinse. You want to rinse it well or your brews will be nasty. The dilution rate is something that eludes me now, something along the lines of a tablespoon or so per 5 gallons water.

I use StarSan, mix it up, place it in a spray bottle and you will use like 1/2 quart of mixed solution per session... it is CHEAP!

Click to expand...

I agree. I mix up StarSan 1 gallon at a time in a glass jug with distilled water. When it's time to brew I test the pH to make sure it's still good and pour some in a spray bottle to spray everything down. At most I probably use 1/2 gallon a brew session if I pour a bunch in a fermenter to slosh around.