no-scent dish soap and boiling water

I have read alot obout proper cleaning products for our beer equipment but I have a question anyway, Im looking for a very detailed answer.

If I use no-scent dish soap and boiling water in my bath tub to sanitize all my equipment what measurement of soap should I use for every litre of water used?
Also, If I wash my hands with this no-scent dish soap will it be fine for me to handle the equipment after washed and dried?

Will my tub be a good place to wash? Or no.

Any input would be helpful.
Thank You.

You have to be careful of semantics here.

Specifically, what is your working definition of "sanitize"?

Technically, when a garbage truck empties a full dumpster into the truck box the dumpster has been sanitized. When you sweep the floor of the garage and lift the oil soaked kitty litter into a trash can one correct name for what you did to the floor of the garage is sanitation.

The path of least resistance to good beer is to use a two step process. iam stillr eading up, but for now the easy way is to first clean your equipment and then second disinfect.

If there is any visible dirt anywhere, you aren't ready to disinfect yet.

I can assure you dish soap has zero anti-microbial activity, but certainly you -could- disinfect with boiling water.

It would be a more pleasant job for you to get everything mechanically clean - no visible dirt- with dish soap and just "hot" water. Then rinse with hot water. Then use boiling water to disinfect.

Not to discourage you, but I doubt you'll keep doing it that way without some gear more specialized than a bathtub.

Soap (even antimicrobial soaps) do nothing to help on the sanitization front.

Buy yourself some Star-San or Iodophor. Both work very quickly (30 second - 2 minute contact time). No rinsing required - really. It takes longer than that for heat alone to sanitize. Both are pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. Neither require you to lug all your gear to the bathtub and get however many gallons of boiling water up there, too. Both are very proven products that the majority of us use to great success.

Alternatively, study up on the use of bleach as a sanitizer; not as ideal (it's not no-rinse like the others), but it's cheap and effective.

First of all: soap is not a sanitizer. It is a cleaner. Plain old soap and water, with good rinsing is all you need to clean things--- don't worry about the ratios just avoid scents or 'anti spotting agents' (and by 'avoid' I mean just that-- avoid it but there's no need to go all OCD about it).

That being said sanitation in brewing is one of the big boogeymen, especially in forums. At the end of the day when you look under the bed, the boogeyman isn't really there--- they just think he is. It is possible to use copious amounts of plain old water--- water that is safe for your kids to drink--- sluiced over clean gear to achieve an appropriate level of sanitation.

However, sanitiation and the chemicals to use is one of the big online debates that people have in brewing. People will often swear by their specific chemicals, processes and gear and it can easily blow up into arguments not unlike those abour religion.

And here's a place where I listed some of the stuff I've done to beer that came out fine.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=239856&postcount=24
I had a list somewhere on this forum of various things my father or I have done to beer and not had anything bad result. Among them are:

-Dog drinks from fermenter
-kid puts hands/toys in fermenter
-sneeze into fermenter

As much as homebrew communities obsess about 'sanitiation', beer is far more forgiving of these kinds of things than people give it credit for.

Consider this: once upon a time Germans didn't believe yeast was a component in beer. Instead they counted on their unsanitary wooden paddle, used to stir the wort, to infuse enough yeast into the mix to cause fermentation.

Poindexter said:

Technically, when a garbage truck empties a full dumpster into the truck box the dumpster has been sanitized. When you sweep the floor of the garage and lift the oil soaked kitty litter into a trash can one correct name for what you did to the floor of the garage is sanitation.

Click to expand...

False.

Here are the definitions from the State of Wisconsin Health department, based on FDA guidelines.
Clean: free of visible soil including food particles and dirt
Sanitary: free of harmful levels of disease causing micro organisms and other harmful contaminates
Sterile: the absence of all living micro organsims

A recently dumped garbage truck would not be clean or santitary.

Boiling hot water may warp or melt your plastic pieces. Pouring boiling water over a glass carboy will probably crack it. You also need longer contact times than just splashing in a bath tub will achieve.

Do yourself a favor and get some Star San today. If you've really read as much as you say you have then you should know this already.

Dish soap is fine for cleaning. Just clean well and rinse well in hot water.

As Kornkob points out, it is easy to go overboard with sanitation. Clean your brewery equipment like you would clean your dishes, dunk it in Star San for insurance, and call it done.

I usually read brewing books, as you can see im new to this forum thing.
I simply wanted to know if the soap route was an ok one, and I see that it can be.

To the first post, im cleaning in my tub... Not brewing in it.

Cleaning is ok wherever you do it- I think it was being pointed out that sanitizing is crucial, though!

I dont see why hot/semi-boiling water wouldnt work for sanitization.
It kills off all the extra soap and whatever smell there is left, Isnt that what we want in sanitization so we dont ruin our next batch of beer?

I dont mean boiling to the point of destroying items.

... and that boiling water is, best case, mighty inconvenient, worst case, will destroy your plastic goods and potentially shatter your carboy (they are very sensitive to thermal shock). I'm also not convinced that the short period of time you would be exposing your stuff to the boiling water would be sufficient to kill everything. Remember, when you boil drinking water, you boil it for 5-10 minutes.

Read this, it's from one of the Bibles.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter2-2-3.html

Dry heat and steam are potentially avenues, but again, wholly impossible for things like tubing and racking canes and glass carboys.

Honestly, why make this more complicated than it needs to be? Spend what, five bucks on a small bottle of Iodophor, it'll last you for a while (you only use a very small amount).

Im very intrigued with this boys.

So if you had access to a tub, and nothing else for cleaning (ie: Its really cold out here so I cannot clean outside) What would you do, what would be your exact step by step method for cleaning if you were in my shoes?

Im just wondering if the tub would need to go through the same cleaning process as my items with the Star San?

Courage said:

I dont see why hot/semi-boiling water wouldnt work for sanitization.
It kills off all the extra soap and whatever smell there is left, Isnt that what we want in sanitization so we dont ruin our next batch of beer?

I dont mean boiling to the point of destroying items.

Click to expand...

You need to kill microorganisms. That's very much beyond just getting stuff clean.

Courage said:

Im very intrigued with this boys.

So if you had access to a tub, and nothing else for cleaning (ie: Its really cold out here so I cannot clean outside) What would you do, what would be your exact step by step method for cleaning if you were in my shoes?

Im just wondering if the tub would need to go through the same cleaning process as my items with the Star San?

Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with cleaning in the tub - but that's not going to be sufficient for sanitizing short of having Star San/Iodophor/bleach. For your carboy, you'll put a gallon or so of the mixed Star San/Iodophor solution in there, swirl it around for a while, and drain it. That's it. Needs about a minute of contact time, but assuming that it was already clean, that's all you need to do, no rinse, no drying, nada. Couldn't be easier.

For smaller stuff, I've got a rubbermaid container, a low, flat one, that I fill with sanitizer for my other stuff (airlocks, racking canes, tubing, etc.).

But again - the process of getting the stuff clean is separate from getting it sanitized (in most cases). There are cleaners like One Step that can also be used as sanitizers, but they tend to get more expensive.

Bleach, you need to be careful with your concentration, and you do need to rinse, but that's a viable, low-cost way of both cleaning and sanitizing.

Exactly- we weren't criticizing your choice of the place to clean your equipment. I clean, sanitize, and brew all in my kitchen. I clean every thing by rinsing with hot water and inspecting. Any obviously dirty items get lots of attention. I don't use a scrubbie, because that can scratch plastic and then the scratches can harbor bacteria. I clean washcloth and hot water do it, since I rinse well after using anything and don't let it dry on. I don't use soap in my brewing stuff, but have used oxyclean for stuff that needed it. I just do this over my kitchen sink.

Then once everything is clean, I use my no-rinse sanitizer. I mostly use One-step, sometime Iodophor. For one-step, it's 1 TBSP per gallon, so I addd two gallons of water to my bucket and then 2 TBSP of water and shake/stir it up. Then I toss everything in there that I want sanitized and submerge. I remove the small items, and put them on a cleaned area of the counter (I also put some of the sanitizer in a little spray bottle and spray the counter lightly). Then, I put the lid on the fermenter and shake it well and let it sit. I remove the lid, and then siphon some of the sanitizer through the siphon tubing to make sure it's sanitized. I do much the same procedure on bottling day with bottles and bottling wands and the bottling bucket and the caps. (I put the caps in a little cereal bowl and put sanitizer in there). It sounds way more complicated than it is- it's easy, actually. No reason to sanitize things that boil, like the brewpot.

Here's some good reading about the importance of sanitizing as part of your brewing: http://howtobrew.com/section1/chapter2.html

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound as critical as I did. No hard feelings.

I clean my equipment at the kitchen sink with a new sponge and oxyclean or no-scent dish soap if its handy. Its just like washing dishes. I rinse well in hot water then sanitize with Star San. Its really that simple.

Cleaning and sanitizing are such essential, but easy, steps in brewing, I don't see why people want to mess with the issue.

I think the OP is still confused about clean, vs sanitized, vs sterilized.

soap will ONLY clean the equipment
it needs to be Sanitized to prevent unwanted yeast and bacteria from ruining your beer
sterilization should not be needed in brewing...sanitized is 'good enough'.

surgical instruments, dental tools, tattoo machines and needles...these all get sterilized in an autoclave and have NOTHING bad left over.


As far as cleaning goes, i would still avoid soap. Oxyclean Free (no scents or dye added) works great, and you can get a huge tub of it for like $6...and it does most of the cleaning by itself...without much elbow grease.
Soap is great for cutting grease and oil...neither of which is present in sufficient amounts in beer making.

cheers!

malkore said:

I think the OP is still confused about clean, vs sanitized, vs sterilized.

soap will ONLY clean the equipment
it needs to be Sanitized to prevent unwanted yeast and bacteria from ruining your beer

Click to expand...

And to add to that, sanitizing does not take the place of cleaning, or vice versa - you need to CLEAN things before you can SANITIZE them properly. There is nothing wrong with cleaning things in your tub. However, given the size, it's probably far from ideal for sanitizing - you'd have to use a lot of sanitizing solution to fill it.

Most of us prepare a smaller amount of sanitizer, usually 5 gallons or less in a bucket or similar, and sanitize things by dunking them in (if they fit) or pouring sanitizer into them (in the case of fermenters/etc), or spraying things down with a spray bottle full of sanitizer. The process varies a bit depending on whether you're using a no-rinse sanitizer (like starsan) or one that must be rinsed (like bleach, depending on how it's prepared)

Chapter 2.2 of How To Brew should tell you what you need to know:
http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter2-2.html

+1 on the previous posts. A two-part cleaning/sanitizing process is your best insurance against infected beer. While less than sanitary conditions may not necessarily cause a bad batch, why risk it?

Sanitizing isn't hard with a good no-rinse solution like star-san. It's relatively cheap, and one batch can last for at least a few brewing sessions. Common applications include:

swirling star-san inside buckets/carboys (no need to submerge them in tubs)
keeping a 5 gal bucket of star-san to soak items that will fit in said bucket
using a spraybottle to spray sanitizer on things like bottle trees, etc.
filling a small narrow pan (a wallpaper trough) for racking canes and autosiphons
using a vinator to spray sanitizer into bottles prior to bottling

Other people like bleach (I don't - I prefer not to rinse); others like idiophor (I never tried it - I'm perfectly happy with star-san).

If you want to keep doing what you're doing, that's fine too. Whatever floats your boat. I think the people here are just trying to tell you there are easier and better ways to do what you're doing.

Good luck with your brewing.