rgrim001
Active Member
I sanitized a carboy with bleach and it smells like bleach now after rinsing it out. I've rinsed with water but it still smells. Will this be enough chlorine to alter the taste of the beer?
Chlorine Disaster?
- Thread starter rgrim001
- Start date
Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:
Melnyk
Active Member
if you can smell it youll be able to taste it, rinse it again and again until its gone. next time use less bleach or go star san, i ruined a batch with chlorine once
After a couple lacto infected batches I bleached my fermenters. My old procedure (pre-StarSan) was to rinse with a bunch in cold water, then warm it up and use hot, then cool it down and use cold again until I could not smell any bleach.
Well, with my recent return to using some bleach, it dawned on me that we use camden tablets to remove bleach and chloramines from our brewing water, so I thought, let's give that a shot for a rinse aid. I did a normal cold water rinse, and could still smell some bleach I took a pinch of camden (I have metabisulfite powder) and put it in the carboy with a couple cups of water, put a cap on and gave it a good shake. I drained and rinsed and NO bleach smell. A little bit of sulfur though. This was followed by a normal StarSan sanitizing and no sulfur aroma was left over.
This is not something I would do routinely, but for the occasional thorough cleaning followed by aggressive sanitation this appears to work well. Lactobacillus will form spores that are difficult to kill and I'm suspicious this was my culprit as I had autoclaved everything else. Bleach will kill the spores where many other sanitizers will not. So far so good.
Well, with my recent return to using some bleach, it dawned on me that we use camden tablets to remove bleach and chloramines from our brewing water, so I thought, let's give that a shot for a rinse aid. I did a normal cold water rinse, and could still smell some bleach I took a pinch of camden (I have metabisulfite powder) and put it in the carboy with a couple cups of water, put a cap on and gave it a good shake. I drained and rinsed and NO bleach smell. A little bit of sulfur though. This was followed by a normal StarSan sanitizing and no sulfur aroma was left over.
This is not something I would do routinely, but for the occasional thorough cleaning followed by aggressive sanitation this appears to work well. Lactobacillus will form spores that are difficult to kill and I'm suspicious this was my culprit as I had autoclaved everything else. Bleach will kill the spores where many other sanitizers will not. So far so good.
Becks
Well-Known Member
Also an option, sometimes leaving it in the sunlight will help reduce the chlorine smell quite a bit.
Hang Glider
Beer Drinker
+1
in the sun if possible. I have heard/read that sunlight breaks down bleach (source needed).
Also, a little StarSan (acid) might help knock back the bleach (base).
Similar threads
