Star-San vs. Iodophor - FIGHT!

I use bleach exclusively.

drayman86 said:

I use bleach exclusively.

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If you're confident about your tap water not having to be boiled in order to call it 'sanitary' then bleach is effective and practically free. If you follow the 'boil all water that touches the beer/wort' ideology, it's probably not as appealing. Some people are forced to follow this ideology, but I think the water here's as good as it can be and that's enough for me.

I find that knowing that my sanitizer is dirt cheap makes me more inclined to, say, fill my bottling bucket with bleach water to sanitize it instead of running a sanitizer rag over it to save on cleaner. That's probably not a common tendency that you guys will share, but it definitely makes a difference for me. I'm not going to be happy about using 5 gallons worth of a cleaner that costs money to sanitize a 5 gallon bucket once.

OK, Here's another vote for both, with some Saniclean thrown in for grins.

For most jobs, carboy(BB), hoses, airlocks, fittings etc., I use Starsan. I make it with DI water and store it for re-use. I like the fact that it will clean as well. The spray bottle gets a lot of use as well. I use it a lot for spot cleaning and to mist the air and take down as much dust as possible, prior to cracking anything open. I took the "don't fear the foam" saying to heart. For a while. I work very hard at not just limiting, but eliminating oxygen exposure during transfers. (CO2 purge of everything) It struck me that all of that foam was full of air. Foam on all the little stuff is easy to get rid of. For the BB, I let it sit over night and then carefully drain so as to eliminate the foam.

On brewday though, I make up a bucket of Iodophor. In goes the plate chiller and everything else. I don't worry about keeping it clean or uncontaminated. I just dump it at the end of the day.

I ended up having one piece of plastic craze and crack from the Saniclean, but not from Starsan. I thought that the acid santizer was the same in both. I use the Saniclean in my tub of water that I use to hold the BB's during secondary. (I was getting mold.)

I use both Star-San and Iodophor.

I am under the impression Star-San cleans solids better, so I use it to clean the primary immediately after using - to clean and kill any remaining stuck on solids. But I find Star-San stinks ... smells mediciney, so I use Iodophor on brew day to sanitize.

I actually kind of like the smell of Star San. I wouldn't drink it or anything, but the smell doesn't bother me.

Star-San all the way.

I use both Star San and Iodophor, depending on what I'm doing. I keep Star San in a spray bottle and use it to spray down stirrers, hydrometer, thermometer, test jar, thief, and so forth. I won't use it in my cornies or conical or carboys because of the foam, which I don't like. For those items, I use Iodophor.

Star san. There is no fight. Don't fear the foam.

drayman86 said:

I use bleach exclusively.

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I did, too, for many years. And it does work well, and is cheap. Why did I switch to Star-san?? I got sick of rinsing, and mixing up a new batch every time I brewed and bottled. Star-San is no rinse, and it lasts for months in a closed container. Iodophor is no good after around 12 hours.

And I ruined too many articles of clothing when the bleach solution spilled on them. I like Star-San now, even though it took me forever to get used to the foam........

Bleach, 1 tbs per gallon with 10-15 min contact time...

Boiling water with 10 min contact time.

Both are cheap and easily found.

I am still confounded by the "star san is expensive" argument.

I mix up a 2 1/2 gallon batch about every 2 months. At the rate I am going my container of star san will outlive me, so if it is adding $.05 a batch I would be shocked.

I agree Star San is not really expensive if you save and reuse it. It does last a long time.

I think many of us who don't like the foam are not fearful of it; we just find it unaesthetic. I'm aware that the foam doesn't hurt my beer and I won't be able to taste it. I don't fear it, but I still find it unappealing. That's why I use Iodophor for all situations where foam might result if using Star San. I reserve my use of Star San for spray-on applications.

I use starsan and have used idophor before

I prefer starsan and use it now because of the short contact, no-rinse, no stain and i actually find the foam beneficial in sanitizing.

+ i talked to a few guys in the industry at the last beer show and they recommended starsan.

I use generic Betadine available at any local pharmacy.

Same disinfectant performance (1% titrated iodine) as Iodophor with better stability in solution. Plus, it's cheap.

Cheesefood said:

I'd like to recast my vote to Iodaphor. I realized a very important reason why it's tits:

If you use it in a bucket, it will tell you where you need to scrub. Good old high school biology, reminding me that iodine changes sugars to a bluish color. You can quickly see where you need to wipe your bucket with a soft rag to remove the crud.

Take that, "Star San".

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Star-San is both a cleaner and sanitizer. So there .

I really wouldnt fancy racking something I intend on drinking onto the residual foam of a sanitising [sic] solution.

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Star-San actually becomes yeast food. Don't fear it!

harrydrez said:

Star-San is both a cleaner and sanitizer. So there .

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I am pretty sure that Star San is just a sanitizer. It is not advertised as such at any rate. Five Star makes PBW as a cleaner.

It's an acid-anionic detergent cleaner/sanitizer.

Star-San is no rinse, works in 30 seconds, and you can drink the stuff.

I bought a 34 oz. bottle of StarSan 3 years ago when I started brewing and I still have 26 ozs. left. I have a bucket dedicated to StarSan and keep about 2 gallons stored for about three months.

When I go to sanitize things, the buckets and carboys get spritzed with a sprayer and swirled around for about thirty seconds.
All hoses stirrers etc. get dropped right in the bucket of Star San for a minute or two while I'm spritzing the other stuff.
Never an infection or aftertaste.

Leaves NO foam in the buckets or carboys and folks, it can't possibly get any cheaper. Even boiling water would be more expensive than how I do it.

You'll never convince me Iodophor is the way to go on this.

Star san doesn't stain my equipment, the foam can be a PIA sometimes, but I don't usually worry about it.

Cost on sanitizer is negligible, if you want clean/sanitized equipment you will pay for it, as for keeping Star-San around for months, unless you are testing the Ph, which requires an additional cost in Ph strips or meters, a 32 oz bottle will make 160 gallons of sanitizer, who cares about 15 bucks or so.

If you brewed 5 gallons a day and used 5 gallons of Star san per day it would last over a month!

+1 to spray bottles of the stuff too! I can pretty much sanitize all of my equipment with a spray bottle!:rockin:

Both work; when I started brewing, nearly two years ago, I began by using acidified bleach. When its shortcomings became apparent, I compared Star San and Iodophor, and there was no contest. I went with Star San, and no regrets, dozens of batches later.

I have been keeping a 1 quart spray bottle of starsan that I make with Distilled water. It is so convenient to keep on hand and very handy to just be able to spray anything with it. I can't really vouch as to whether one is more effective than the other though.

I saved a batch of Star-San made with distilled water, and each time I use it, I dribble a few more drops of concentrate into the solution to keep it acidic. Not sure if my chemistry is correct, but it seems logical to me...

I have both and have gone back and forth.

Now, star san 100% for when I'm bottling.

Star san for most other tasks.

Iodophor when I want to bulk clean something. Mix up a big five gallon batch, and soak all my equipment, run tons of other stuff through, etc.

I use iodophor once in a while, but every time I do, I wish I had gone with Star-San because it won't stain everything yellow. Once I run out of iodophor, I don't plan on buying any more.

If you' re staining stuff yellow with iodofor, you're using WAY too much.

Boondoggie said:

If you' re staining stuff yellow with iodofor, you're using WAY too much.

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25 ppm, 1oz per 5gal. Pretty sure that's the normal concentration. Mostly just stains the vinyl tubing, but it's still annoying.

i use starsan for almost everything but bottling because it foams to much so for bottleing its iodofer

I have been using idophor with good results, no infections. I have read that some people prefer starsan so I ponied up the 17 dollars just to try it. Give me some time and this new brewer will give an unbiased opinion on both. And, I have never stained a bucket or tubing using a syringe to measure my idophor. Fingers, yes....plastic no. In addition, I love the smell, it reminds me of being in the hospital where everything has to be clean. I do like the idea of starsan being able to be stored for future brews. We will see and I will post my experiences.

Does anyone have any input on the Five Star IO Star Iodine Sanitizer? It's an iodine sanitizer made by the StarSan people (my local brew shop doesn't carry Iodophor).

neither.

it's pretty silly to buy star san OR iodophor, when a tablespoon of bleach plus a tablespoon of vinegar works equally well, and it's no-rinse necessary at that density...

careful not to mix the vinegar and bleach directly though (poison gas!)

Just a side note....My wife is in the medical field, and I brought up this particular question with her. From her professional opinion, do you really need the extra iodine in your system? Even if the Idophor (or whichever iodine based sanitizer you use) is in trace amounts, and does not affect taste at all, it still puts trace amounts of iodine into the beer that we are going to be consuming. Since there is salt in almost everything, and that salt is generally speaking already iodized, do you really want to be adding even more iodine to your system?

RBlagojevich said:

neither.

it's pretty silly to buy star san OR iodophor, when a tablespoon of bleach plus a tablespoon of vinegar works equally well, and it's no-rinse necessary at that density...

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Ha....Got anything else you'd like to sell me? Perhaps, a US Senate seat?

RBlagojevich said:

neither.

it's pretty silly to buy star san OR iodophor, when a tablespoon of bleach plus a tablespoon of vinegar works equally well, and it's no-rinse necessary at that density...

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"At that density" implies a certain amount of water. How much?

RBlagojevich said:

neither.

it's pretty silly to buy star san OR iodophor, when a tablespoon of bleach plus a tablespoon of vinegar works equally well, and it's no-rinse necessary at that density...

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Are you sure that's no-rinse? And if so, are you sure it's still a sanitizer at that concentration? Vinegar is only pH 2.4, so in a 5 gallon solution...

log (1 / (1 / (10^2.4) / (5 gallons * 256 tbsp/gallon))) = 5.5

I don't know that the acidity of your acidulated bleach solution is low enough to kill anything.

Plus, the sanitizing concentration for bleach is 1 part bleach in 10 parts water, so 1 tbsp bleach in 1280 tbsp (5 gallons) of water is no where near enough.

I'm not a chemist, though, so correct me if I got that wrong.

Brau_Haus said:

do you really want to be adding even more iodine to your system?

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Sure...At a particularly innocuous concentration (parts per million), pick your poison:

• iodine - readily sublimes (vaporizes)
• phosphoric acid - readily breaks down in the presence of organic compounds
• ammonia (quat) - readily breaks down in the presence of organic compounds
• chlorine - oxides everything in its path!
• ...

The only compound on the list I regularly avoid is chlorine.

Brau_Haus said:

Just a side note....My wife is in the medical field, and I brought up this particular question with her. From her professional opinion, do you really need the extra iodine in your system? Even if the Idophor (or whichever iodine based sanitizer you use) is in trace amounts, and does not affect taste at all, it still puts trace amounts of iodine into the beer that we are going to be consuming. Since there is salt in almost everything, and that salt is already iodized, do you really want to be adding even more iodine to your system?

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Not all salt is iodized. I use kosher salt for almost all of my cooking, and it is definitely *not* iodized.

Hegh said:

Not all salt is iodized. I use kosher salt for almost all of my cooking, and it is definitely *not* iodized.

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Thank you, Hegh. I have corrected the original post.

lamarguy said:

Sure...At a particularly innocuous concentration (parts per million), pick your poison:

* iodine - readily sublimes (vaporizes)
* phosphoric acid - readily breaks down in the presence of organic compounds
* ammonia (quat) - readily breaks down in the presence of organic compounds
* chlorine - oxides everything in its path!
* ...


The only compound on the list I regularly avoid is chlorine.

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Fair enough. I thought I'd toss it out there. Between the information I've been collecting here, as well as bouncing it off of my wife, I've been getting quite an education.

But if the amounts are so innocuous, wouldn't the minimal amounts of chlorine also be subsequently forced to bond with the ions in the beer, thus stopping the oxidation process?

RBlagojevich said:

neither.

it's pretty silly to buy star san OR iodophor, when a tablespoon of bleach plus a tablespoon of vinegar works equally well, and it's no-rinse necessary at that density...

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I would bet ya that stored star san is still cheaper, oh and I use star san to bottle because I like the idea of the yeasties eating it and only leaving beer. I'm not looking for vinegary-bleachy beer anytime in my near future.

For less than 25 cents a batch, I'll stick with my star san. Silly? Please; it's silly to try and save a quarter and end up not even sanitizing your bottles, not getting the job done, and hence just ingesting bleach for fun. THAT seems silly to me.