How long is something sanitized?

Excuse me if this topic has been talked about before (it surely has), but I couldn't find it with a search. I just transferred my first batch of homebrew (porter) to the secondary fermenter and am hoping to bottle it sometime next week. Since I have a strong background in chemistry, everything so far is pretty intuitive, but sanitization seems kind of mystical.

While I have some free time tonight, I plan on cleaning and removing the labels from my large collection of bottles. I figured that I might as well save some time and sanitize the bottles simultaneously (or directly after removing the labels).

My question is, how long after you sanitize something can it sit and still be considered sanitized? Obviously, this depends on a number of factors, but just a general rule - hours, days, weeks?

Is it different for different pieces of equipment? Plastic beer buckets, tubing, carboys, bottles?

And is there anything special you do to keep it sanitized for a while, besides putting it in a box and covering it up?

Thanks in advance.

Generally it will stay sanitized for awhile if your item is clean. If you let air circulate, dust will settle into the gear and you can't really tell if it is still sanitized.

To make it easy on yourself just clean your gear and dry it before putting it away. On the next brew day just rinse out your post boil gear and sanitize them. A spray bottle of starsan will let you wet everything down quickly and not have to soak anything.

Depends on the sanitizer, I think. Star San leaves a coating that's supposed to help preserve a sanitized state for a while after dried. One-Step says it's only effective while wet.

IMO, your gear is only sanitized while it's still wet with Star San or Iodophor soln.

GNBrews said:

IMO, your gear is only sanitized while it's still wet with Star San or Iodophor soln.

Click to expand...

+1 Agreed.

However, for your bottles, after you have sanitized them, you can "cap" them with sanitized aluminum foil and greatly reduce the chance of them getting contaminated.

I keg everything now but keep a bunch of cleaned bottles with foil caps for the occasion when I need to bottle a few. I sanitize with starsan right before filling.

Ed

Just clean and rinse the bottles before storing. Sanitize within a couple of hours of bottling. Can't be too careful with sanitation.

GNBrews said:

IMO, your gear is only sanitized while it's still wet with Star San or Iodophor soln.

Click to expand...

I agree. No rinse/wet contact sanitizer are double edged swords. Literally. They kill two ways. They kill everything on the object prior to sanitizing, and then as long as they are still wet they form a sanitizer barrier that kills everything that comes into contact with object.

If you let the sanitizer dry any micro organism that comes in contact with the sanitized object, rather than being killed by it, makes the object no longer sanitzed.

I delable my bottles and hit them with starsan after I do so, But on bottling day I still sanitize them again. There's no such thing as too much sanitization.

Listen, I can do my entire bottling process including sanitizing my bottles in under an hour. So do a lot of folks.

I outline my process in this thread, along with other people, apply a few tricks and tips, and you'll have no problem santizing and doing everything else on bottling day.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/revvys-tips-bottler-first-time-otherwise-94812/

Before I switched to kegging (god I hate bottling) I would remove the labels as I drank the beers and ran the bottles through the dishwasher (without soap!) on the sanitizing function right before I bottled. I've never had a problem with infection and it is a hell of a lot easier than sanitizing 50 bottles at once by hand. I don't see the point of sanitizing it after you clean them and then sanitizing them again before you bottle. Just do it once.