soap

I've been using whatever my wife buys for dish soap to clean out my fermenters and stuff. I rinse it well and hit it with star-san before brewing, but I have read in books that you should never use any soap that was not designed for brewing. Is this true? Especially for bottles, I don't think that I could really get them clean without soap.

Some soaps are hard to really rinse off well.. but, my main bugaboo would be the perfumes that many of them come with.. Me, from an allergy standpoint.. Beer, from unwanted scents leaching out and affecting the beer.

I'd guess most detergents that are used in dishwashers would rinse very well.. just go to the store and do some box sniffing.. people might think you are having issues.. but.. WTH.

I routinely use whatever dish soap is on the counter for washing items...including bottles. Give everything a good triple rinse with really hot water and you'll have no problems. Then on to the sanitizer.

I never use soap on any of my beer or wine stuff- never.

I always use oxiclean or the generic "oxygen based cleaner" stuff. For stuff that needs a really good cleaning, I use the more expensive PBW when needed for a long time soak.

I use oxyclean free ... chlorine free and fragrance free for all my washing. It rinses very well bottle, buckets, carboys everything then a multiple rinses with very hot water. Most dishwasher detergents and dish soaps have perfumes and anti foaming and anti-spot /drying agents that do not rinse well and keep beer from producing a good head so I do not use them. I wash bottles with oxiclean free and brush then run them through the dishwasher with no soap and no jet dry... just for the super hot water as a rinse and hot dry to get them really clean. Sanitize with starsan and fill.

Oxy-clean unscented for me. Works better than the dish stuff.

All it takes is the wife trying a new brand for things to go wrong.

Same as Yooper.
If stuff needs a good cleaning like used carboys, buckets, racking tubes and hoses, they only get straight oxy clean and or star-san and air drying. Even used bottles only get a triple water rinse and air dry then a star-san soak on bottle day. Boil kettles and mash tuns get only a water and soft sponge scrubbing.

Not sure why I feel like I need to defend my previous post but...I do use dish soap for most everything...I also use PBW for the heavy stuff.

...is anyone here going going to tell me that they wash their meal cookware, dishes, drinking water glass, and pints with anything other than common dish soap? I highly doubt the celebrity Chefs like Batali, Ray, Flay, Ramsey and the like are washing there goods with Oxyclean and PBW.

Should we move toward more alergen and perfume free products that are more "green"? Perhaps, but will common dish soap get it clean? Of course it will!

...and unless your cleaning/rinsing practices are just awful, you are also going to have a hard time convincing me that dish soap is going to leach off flavors and odors into your finished product.

Thanks for listening to my rant...I feel better.

My last batch, I had a bunch of yeast sticking to the bottles. I wonder if it has anything to do with the soap I used.