Home brewing in Japan

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Just curious…does anyone have any good alternatives to Starsan? Just ordered some from Homebrewing service, but damn, it is costly…should be good for 6-12 months but, there must be a better way, no?? Hope this wasn't covered before, but thanks in advance!

Cheers!
 
1 oz bleach 1 oz vinegar for every 1 gallon of water. Put one in, fill in most of the water, put the other one in. It works great as a no rinse sanitizer. Do NOT put them in the water at the same time, wait until one is diluted in the water.
 
gorobrew said:
Just curious…does anyone have any good alternatives to Starsan? Just ordered some from Homebrewing service, but damn, it is costly…should be good for 6-12 months but, there must be a better way, no?? Hope this wasn't covered before, but thanks in advance!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

That's at the top of my list from Morebeer!

And... if you use it in spray form, it will last forever. Go to the homestore, get a 3ml plastic eyedropper (supoito in japanese). 3ml per 2 liters of waters. Then go to the 100 yen store, get a sprayer head which fits 500 ml pet bottles. Spray away. I never soak things. Everything gets sprayed. Any bottled water works. Of course, distilled water is better, but hard to find. 2 liters of regular water will get used up before the ph changes.
 
Nomofett said:
1 oz bleach 1 oz vinegar for every 1 gallon of water. Put one in, fill in most of the water, put the other one in. It works great as a no rinse sanitizer. Do NOT put them in the water at the same time, wait until one is diluted in the water.
Click to expand...

Great advice…will be using that method once the the Starsan is done. I'm guessing just white vinegar, yeah? What about the bleach? Just your standard, liquid kitchen bleach I'm guessing…


Thanks!
 
tektonjp said:
That's at the top of my list from Morebeer!

And... if you use it in spray form, it will last forever. Go to the homestore, get a 3ml plastic eyedropper (supoito in japanese). 3ml per 2 liters of waters. Then go to the 100 yen store, get a sprayer head which fits 500 ml pet bottles. Spray away. I never soak things. Everything gets sprayed. Any bottled water works. Of course, distilled water is better, but hard to find. 2 liters of regular water will get used up before the ph changes.
Click to expand...

That is what I'll do…yeah, don't know if I've ever seen distilled water here, or if I have, didn't recognize it as such…
 
humm curious,
is it really distilled water or is it drinking water;
people often say distilled water is not as tasty as water with a mineral content... what are the specs on this water? I didn't see any, did I miss it in my haste?

If it really is just distiled water then itis a very good price;
I usually use seisei-sui from the drug stores & that works well enough for some silver halide emulsions....
 
They have distilled water at my low drugstore. I used this thread as reference http://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+122597

And yeah I just use white vinegar. The interview I heard he (the guy that invented starsan) said to get the cheapest bleach possible, nicer bleach usually has other stuff in it. So I just get mine at the daiso. Huge jug of vinegar at Costco for 500¥ and 100¥ bleach will last you forever.
 
Or I don't know the diff. between distilled and RO water, but RO is easy to find at supermarkets
 
Blue-Frog said:
humm curious,
is it really distilled water or is it drinking water;
people often say distilled water is not as tasty as water with a mineral content... what are the specs on this water? I didn't see any, did I miss it in my haste?

If it really is just distiled water then itis a very good price;
I usually use seisei-sui from the drug stores & that works well enough for some silver halide emulsions....
Click to expand...

Well, going by the title　”蒸留水”, I'm assuming it is indeed distilled water.
As for taste, I'm not planning on drinking it. Just to keep my starsan happy and healthy!

And, distilled vs R/O water: different process, nearly identical finish.
 
The distilled in about the same as small bottled waters cost. RO is quite a bit cheaper they have them at lots of Daie (I'm sure I'm spelling it wrong "die-a")
 
Do any of our group here, do any water manipulation? What sort of tests/logic/guidelines do you follow? What tools, water reports etc. do you look at?
 
As a new Dad, I've been using the same product that we use to sanitize the baby's bottles. There's a few different brands out there... Milton probably being the big brand, but there are lower cost alternatives. They're all a no-rinse sanitizer. They all seem to say that you should leave stuff in for an hour, but I'd expect that you could get away with less.
 
gorobrew said:
Just curious…does anyone have any good alternatives to Starsan? Just ordered some from Homebrewing service, but damn, it is costly…should be good for 6-12 months but, there must be a better way, no?? Hope this wasn't covered before, but thanks in advance!

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I just keep a 20L jug of starsan solution around until it starts to get opaque. Usually lasts 9 months or so of frequent use. Stuff is perfectly fine to use over and over, so a large bottle lasts me years.

Blue-Frog said:
Do any of our group here, do any water manipulation? What sort of tests/logic/guidelines do you follow? What tools, water reports etc. do you look at?
Click to expand...

I found a water report for my neighborhood online and then plugged the valid information into bru'n water. Mostly I just add a tiny bit of chalk and decent measure of gypsum for hoppy or English brews. Food grade acids are readily available on Amazon and some other places. Actually on the FB group, a few months ago, someone posted a good shop here with loads of food grade chemicals and stuff.
 
Same, for hoppy beers a little gypsum and Epsom. Lately I tried citric acid to get the ph down and that worked great, but you only need a tiny tiny bit. I bought a ph meter off amazon to help me judge. I've heard lactic is better but it's kinda spendy from what I've seen.
 
... FB group, a few months ago, someone posted a good shop here with loads of food grade chemicals and stuff
Click to expand...

Can FB be searched? I am not FB savvy... any tips on how to pull it up?

I found a water report for my neighborhood online and then plugged the valid information into bru'n water
Click to expand...

How complete was the info, I think mine only includes total hardness (?)

I bought a ph meter off amazon to help me judge.
Click to expand...

I have a benchtop model, but haven't gotten it set up again yet. (ugh!)
Looking into getting a handheld one I saw a very cheap (1600￥～)aquarium type (etc.) digital pH meter - Anyone ever use or even trust these? They read to 0.1 pH units... is this tecnology at work or more voodoo science?
 
Yeah, its headquarters is in Tokyo. http://www.daiei.co.jp/index.php

Also, do you live in Tokyo? On one of the FB groups someone gave me the results of a water report they got done in Tokyo. It's a few years old and that stuff changes but it'd be a good basic guide. I can find it if you want.

The digital ph meters work well from what I've heard. I got a 4 (maybe 6?) thousand yen one that goes to 0.01 because everything I read online from people with a 0.1 said they wished they had a 0.01 one so I figured might as well just spend a little extra now. Is it worth it? Maybe not, but it doesn't hurt and since I do small batch I don't have any other spends equipment.
 
Yea, I'd like to look at it... it might help me figure things out, even though I am not in Tokyo these days.
 
Here is the one for my hood. Searched my municipal water supplier's site for around an hour trying to find the damn thing and started translating it during lunch one day and never bothered finishing it. Quite a bit more detailed than what we need.
In the search I also found a general water report for the big cities here. The water varies quite a bit. Especially chlorine/chloramine content.

View attachment Tenpaku-ku water report.pdf
 
Water reports...
yea, doesn't look quite complete enough for really good brewery work. (?)

What would you (anyone here) do in general, to brew a Porter?
 
I am FAR from an expert in water chemistry, but I have become interested in it and done a lot of reading over the past year or so. I had a few consecutive batches with off flavors a while back, so before heading home to the States one time, I filled up a PET bottle with my tap water and sent it off to Ward Labs in Nebraska for a detailed analysis. Not exactly a convenient thing to do unless you're on your way to the States anyway (and I don't even know what US customs would say about that...), but it was probably the best thing I've ever done for my brewing. Long story short, my Japanese tap water was not the cause of my off flavors. That's another issue in itself - but what I found is that my water is an ideal 'blank slate' for brewing. With just minor additions of gypsum, calcium chloride and epsom salts, depending on the style, the beer I brew now is far superior to what I brewed before I saw the report and had it interpreted for me.

Obviously your water will be different (possibly very different) from my water up here in Fukushima. But what I've found IN GENERAL is that Japanese water seems to be on the soft side, which is better than the alternative because we can adjust our water profiles simply by adding small additions of brewing salts, rather than having to 'cut' our tap water with distilled or RO water because of its high mineral content.

My water up here looks like this:

pH: 5.9
Calcium: 11
Magnesium: 3
Sodium: 4
Sulfate: 18
Chloride: 3
Bicarbonate: 21
Alkalinity: 16

I posted this profile in the 'water chemistry' or 'brewing science' forum on this website and got amazing feedback from folks who are true experts on this stuff. One of the guys who helped me wrote this program, 'Bru'n'Water': https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/home/files I HIGHLY recommend downloading this and giving it a try.

To Blue-Frog above, if your water profile is anything like mine or anything like the 'Tokyo' profile posted above, you can probably brew a great porter without doing much at all. With my water profile (and with the 'Tokyo' profile above), I would add just a small amount of food grade Calcium Chloride (purchased on Amazon or Rakuten) to boost my chloride content to about 60ppm, or thereabouts, for very dark, malty beers. It seems to add a smoothness and roundness to the malt character.

Bru'n'Water recommends the following profile for 'black, malty beers':

Calcium: 60
Magnesium: 5
Sodium: 20
Sulfate: 29
Chloride: 41
Bicarbonate: 155

There's a WHOLE LOT that goes into all of this and I just know the tip of the iceberg, but maybe this will help someone out there. I just thought I'd share what little knowledge I've accumulated over the past few months of trying to mess with my own brewing water after getting mine analyzed. Happy brewing -

Disclaimer: I am not a scientist or an authority on this subject whatsoever.
 
Thank you for that post.
The information will be used.

I was wondering about porters etc. because of something I heard about
the mash pH and dark malts... I can't remember what it was... just something about acidity...

in our new location, I have noticed scale build-up on water fixtures that was unexpected... I am wondering if soft water that deposits scale is a real thing... :fro: or if it's just this guys dandruff. :confused:
 
Yes, dark/roasted/caramel malts have an acidifying effect on the mash. But as I understand it, the extent to which they lower your actual mash pH is determined by a lot of other things - particularly your water's bicarbonate level, as bicarbonate acts as an acid buffer. So basically if your water is high in bicarbonates (like the water used for brewing Guinness and other famous dark beers), the dark malts will bring your mash pH down to a level suitable for brewing, hopefully not lower. But if you have very little bicarbonate in your water, your mash pH could go lower than is ideal for brewing after the addition of so much dark malt. Another thing to consider is that if you add calcium chloride or calcium sulfate to bring your chloride or sulfate content up, the calcium that you added along with it is also going to have an acidifying effect on the mash. Again, there's way more that goes into all of this that is way over my head, but that's what I've taken from my little bit of research.

So how do you know if your pH is too low and what do you do about it? Honestly, when I brew dark beers I don't know. I plug all of my information into that Bru'n'Water spreadsheet and it gives me an estimate of what my mash pH will be after adding whatever grains I input. It's never been outside of the recommended brewing range, and I've never had any problems that I can attribute to low mash pH. If I were having problems and I had the money, I would buy a nice pH meter. But I don't have the money and I've been told by many people who know far more than I do that the 'el cheap' pH meters are very inaccurate and not even worth trifling with.

As for soft water that deposits a scale - I have no idea...! Do your best to get as accurate a report of your water as possible, and make tiny additions from there. If you get a water report, post it up in the brewing science section. I'm sure a guy called 'ajdelange' will comment on it. Listen to that guy. His knowledge is incredible.
 
Hey Nomofett,

I've been using a similar approach for 3 years- no problems but the original recipe (outlined by the maker of Starsan) is:
1oz (29.57ml) bleach *5* gallons (18.9l) water 1oz vinegar. 30 seconds of contact time.

Here is the source from 2007: http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/3/9/0/390...58399415&hwt=dd8690bf656e38d8c9fd718024f629f8 (at 19:00)

He also talks the difference between cleaning and sanitizing and about old bleach and why you need the vinegar.

Five gallons however, is too much for me (it has no shelf life) and my equipment is metric so I do:
7.5ml bleach, 4.75 L, 7.5ml vinegar. I use this sanitizer for my bottles, hoses and plastic fermenters.

One thing to note- bleach causes micro pitting on stainless steel- so if you have stainless equipment use something else (I use Starsan only for my stainless).

Nomofett said:
1 oz bleach 1 oz vinegar for every 1 gallon of water. Put one in, fill in most of the water, put the other one in. It works great as a no rinse sanitizer. Do NOT put them in the water at the same time, wait until one is diluted in the water.
Click to expand...
 
Oops, thanks, I use metric also and I weigh it so I was afraid I was gonna get something wrong so I googled it and got that. Yeah I usually use 14grams per 9 liters, which is pretty much the same. 9 liters is about the right size for me to soak stuff in.

I didn't know about the stainless steel thing, thanks! Luckily I don't have enough money for stainless steel stuff yet but that's good to know for when I upgrade!
 
Guzzibrew said:
(it has no shelf life)
Click to expand...


I concur with everything said, but anecdotal evidence (smell) indicates an increase in punch with time up to a point... and actually a limited "shelf life" (weeks rather than months or years).
I think the release of chlorine is not all that "instant"....

I will do some testing if doubt is phenomenormous,
(haha just coined a new word?!!).

I do use 5 gal. and soak in it.
With smaller amts, are you spraying it?
 
Funny, whenever I've pitched the use of the bleach/vinegar on other threads here, some folks get very very upset because of the potentially dangerous mixing of the two and say it won't work. Even backing it up with Charlie's statement, the furor continued. But I still use it. My empty fermenter gets the hottest water out of my IC and I add the bleach and vinegar to the hot water to sanitise it and any other bits for cold side work (transfer hose, air-lock, etc).
 
Humm, not so sure about hot water and bleach...
I think hot water with chlorine in it is a prettty good way to drive off the chlorine.
Or, perhaps it gives you a quicker, bigger bang for your buck(?!)... if so this might minimize the safety being provided by the water in the first place; not really sure about the kinetics here but its something to consider at any rate.

As far as nay sayers...
Well, I think it is better not to publicly push the method.
Murphy's Law applies here.
 
BlueFrog,

I use just enough so I can fill half my fermenter. I stand it upright, then invert it to get my 30 seconds of contact time.

I know the amounts of beach and vinegar are small but I hate to dump all that solution down the drain.

I've also kept the solution around for a bit- but never longer than a week- it would be good to know how long it stays viable. I'd love to be able to keep it around for 2-3 weeks then I could sanitize my fermenter and then bottles/ equipment before bottling.

Tektonjp,

The only stainless I have is my kettle, grain basket, hop screen, valves and some kegs that I use as secondary fermenters and then keg serving.

Speaking of which, I have a couple of extra 5 gallon kegs (fully rebuilt with new gaskets) that are surplus to my needs- if anyone needs any shoot me a PM.

GB
 
Guzzibrew said:
BlueFrog,

...the amounts of beach and vinegar are small but I hate to dump all that solution down the drain.

I've also kept the solution around for a bit- but never longer than a week- it would be good to know how long it stays viable. I'd love to be able to keep it around for 2-3 weeks then I could sanitize my fermenter and then bottles/ equipment before bottling.
Click to expand...

I understand.
I have been scheming up tests for effectiviness; typical residual solution volumes (based on size of container) and acceptably safe, maximum concentration levels.

Is everyone else using this method with their equipment
rinsed, unrinsed, wet or dry?

(I am using it while still damp moist wet)
 
Blue-Frog said:
I understand.
I have been scheming up tests for effectiviness; typical residual solution volumes (based on size of container) and acceptably safe, maximum concentration levels.

Is everyone else using this method with their equipment
rinsed, unrinsed, wet or dry?

(I am using it while still damp moist wet)
Click to expand...

Well, the advantage of the bleach/vinegar, I thought, was that the addition of vinegar, besides increasing the killing power of bleach, also made the solution into a no rinse one. I could be wrong; it's been a long time since I listened to Charlie Talley.

And this about bleach. You're right about the hot water, I believe.

http://www.info.gov.hk/info/sars/en/useofbleach.htm
 
IIRC, it is no rinse because the effective concentration is low enough that any problems are simply well below threshold. At higher concentrations it must be rinsed.

And that makes as much sense as taking a good shower -
then drying off with a dirty towel.
 
Its been a while since I have used the bleach/vinegar solution. I don't think it has a safe shelf life, I lost a brew when using week old stuff. I believe the addition of vinegar makes the chlorine more volatile. Think of campden tablets and sulfur dioxide: it off-gasses almost completely in 24 hours. Chlorine in tapwater off-gasses in 24 hours. Its not worth the risk to me, so if I were to use the mixture again I would mix a fresh batch every day I needed it.
If you don't want to feel like you are wasting it, you can put it in spray bottles and hit your shower room walls, kitchen counters & floor, and other household cleaning tasks with the leftovers.
 

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