Sanitizer from a store

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mitrrek

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Myrtle Beach
Seeing as how Myrtle Beach doesn't have a LHBS I need to find a store that will supply me with a good sanitizer, Walmart didn't really have anything along the lines of what I was looking for. I started looking at the Lowes website but didn't really find anything that specific.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Has anyone used Simple Green to sanitize with?
 
Is this a desperation thing (like you need some right now), or are you talking about in general? If you were desperate, bleach used to be the go to sanitizer. You'll have to rinse a bunch and really make sure you get all the bleach off of everything, but it can be done. I'm not sure of the proper dilution, but I think the online version of How to Brew should say. There might also be a recipe out there to dilute iodine into a useable concentration (since iodine is the active ingredient in Iodophor), but I wouldn't know where to start or how to go about using it.

If you're talking about in general, I'd have to say don't bother with anything that's not specifically used for brewing. Do yourself a favor and go online and buy a bottle of Starsan. If you use distilled water to dilute it, that stuff will last forever. Also, unlike bleach or anything else you're likely to find in a store, Starsan is no rinse so you don't have to worry about a second step. Just soak your stuff, foam it up good, and dump the liquid back into a container for storage, and you're good to go.
 
Thanks for the quick response, I'd rather avoid using bleach unless absolutely necessary. I just saw that Lowes has a 5lb container of Oxiclean for 10 bucks, I might pick that up until I can order a tub of StarSan online or something.

Would you recommend Oxiclean over bleach?



Is this a desperation thing (like you need some right now), or are you talking about in general? If you were desperate, bleach used to be the go to sanitizer. You'll have to rinse a bunch and really make sure you get all the bleach off of everything, but it can be done. I'm not sure of the proper dilution, but I think the online version of How to Brew should say. There might also be a recipe out there to dilute iodine into a useable concentration (since iodine is the active ingredient in Iodophor), but I wouldn't know where to start or how to go about using it.

If you're talking about in general, I'd have to say don't bother with anything that's not specifically used for brewing. Do yourself a favor and go online and buy a bottle of Starsan. If you use distilled water to dilute it, that stuff will last forever. Also, unlike bleach or anything else you're likely to find in a store, Starsan is no rinse so you don't have to worry about a second step. Just soak your stuff, foam it up good, and dump the liquid back into a container for storage, and you're good to go.


It's sort of a desperation thing, I want to get this batch in the fermenter ASAP so I can start on another one. Is Oxiclean no rinse?
 
Oxiclean is great for cleaning, but it can't be qualified as a sanitizer. Its certainly better than using no sanitizer at all, but it won't necessarily kill anything. Plus, you'll still have to rinse everything a ton to make sure that there isn't any left over making its way into the final product.

If you're trying to think outside the box, alcohol is a great sanitizer. For 10 bucks you could get a cheap handle of vodka and use that to clean everything. Haven't tried it outside of a lab setting, but it would definitely kill most everything with a little bit of contact time. Depending on what you're trying to sanitize, it might not work. I could see trying to do a bunch of little things being a pain, but if you're just sanitizing a fermenter you could swirl that around pretty well and contact all the surfaces.
 
Oxyclean isn't a sanitizer.

Starsan isn't a cleaner.

You need a different product for each job and your queries seem to indicate you might be a little unclear about the difference. Bleach is your best (maybe only) option for an easily available sanitizer and if you are nervous about using it, by the time you do enough research into using it the bottle of starsan you orderd online will have gotten to your house.

Just because Simply Green has "Green" in the label doesn't mean it's not a really dangerous household chemical that shouldn't be used to clean food consumption surfaces. That's an awful idea.
 
Hmm, thanks for all the tips. Maybe I'll just wait until I order StarSan before putting this batch in, no sense in wasting a whole batch of beer just because I wanted to get this one done.
 
FWIW, keep Simple Green away from most metals! It has a nasty habit of discoloring and etching the surface in ways you don't want, especially aluminum, steel, iron, copper, and brass, and sometimes SS too. There's a metal safe version with "aircraft" in the name for use on aluminum and magnesium aircraft parts that won't attack the metal, but it costs a small fortune and you won't find it at wally world.
 
Another vote for bleach. Stop worrying about it, it's a highly effective chemical that can be used for both cleaning and sanitizing. It has been used successfully for many years, not just at the home level, but commercial breweries have been known to employ it as well. It's cheap and it works.
 
Do you have a Tractor Supply Company, or other Feed and Seed type place? Because you can use this stuff or something like it.

See this thread for details. It's no-rinse when mixed to the same concentration as Iodophor.
 
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