Cleaning and Sanitation

One of the first steps and most important steps in producing any fermented beverage, be it beer, wine, mead, or cider, is cleaning and sanitation. This article explains why sanitation is so important, the differences between cleaning, santitation, and sterilization, and the techniques used by homebrewers to achieve them.

Sanitation for the Beginning Homebrewer

This article will go into some detail about the reasons for cleaning and sanitizing your equipment thoroughly and the products and methods used by homebrewers to clean and sanitize their equipment. Sanitation is an important part of homebrewing, and if you have trouble with your first few batches, this is one of the first areas you should review carefully. But for your first batch, there are a few important points to bear in mind.

• Clean and sanitize everything that comes into contact with the wort after the boil. Don't worry about sanitizing your brew pot or stirring spoon; the heat of the boil will kill any unwanted microorganisms. But do clean and sanitize your fermenter, bottles, airlock and anything else that will touch the wort after the boil ends.
• Don't use abrasive cleaners to clean plastic. Scrubbing pads, abrasive cleansers, and other rough cleaning methods can create tiny scratches in plastic where microorganisms can live.
• Don't use scented detergent to clean plastic. It's a better idea to use bleach or an oxygen-based cleaner, since detergents can leave a film on your equipment that can be bad for your beer. But if you do use a detergent, use a non-scented version and rinse thoroughly.

As a beginning homebrewer, you should also be sure to read the sections below on Cleaning versus Sanitation to understand why you have to both clean and sanitize your equipment, and the section on Sanitizing Products to help you choose a sanitizer.

The Importance of Sanitation

All fermentation is essentially the controlled growing of microorganisms, usually yeast but sometimes also bacteria. A brewer or winemaker is first and foremost a yeast farmer. Since poor yeast growing conditions can lead to off flavors, most brewers or vintners try to create as healthy as possible an environment for the microorganisms that convert sugar to alcohol.

Unfortunately, the conditions that are good for the yeast you want to encourage are also hospitable to many unwelcome microorganisms, including bacteria, wild yeast, and other organisms that can spoil your beer or lead to off flavors.

This is why cleaning and sanitation are so important. By making sure that there are as few microorganisms as possible growing in your equipment, you can keep your yeast well fed and avoid feeding any unwelcome guests.

Cleaning versus Sanitation

There are a number of different approaches to eliminating microbial contaminants. The two most important are cleaning and sanitizing. It is important to understand what these words mean, and what they don't mean.

Cleaning

Cleaning is the process of removing visible residue--in other words, dirt--from your equipment. By itself, cleaning is not enough to guarantee a clean fermentation; cleaning agents will not usually kill a significant number of the microorganisms that spoil beer. However, cleaning is an important first step, because without careful cleaning, dirt can provide a place for these microorganisms to hide, making sanitizing almost impossible.

Sanitizing

Sanitizing, also known as sanitation or sanitization, is the process of killing most of the microorganisms on your equipment. Most sanitizing methods used in home brewing will kill most of the active organisms, but may not kill spores or destroy every individual bacteria or yeast cell. Homebrewers usually sanitize their equipment with sanitizing solutions, meaning that any microorganisms that are not on the surface of the equipment, such as those hidden in dirt or residue inside the equipment, will not be affected. This is why it is important to clean thoroughly before you sanitize.

Sanitized surfaces still contain some microorganisms, but few enough that they do not seriously compete with yeast for sugars.

Sterilizing

Sterilizing or sterilization is the process of killing every living cell in your equipment, including spores. Sterilizing is usually not necessary for homebrewing purposes, except in specialized circumstances such as culturing yeast or canning wort.

Cleaning and Sanitation Procedures

What to Clean and Sanitize

Given all the sugars, syrups, heat, yeast and other "gunk" involved, the brewing and fermentation process can result in some extremely dirty equipment, with hard-to-remove stains and residue that have a tendency to frustrate brewers if they don't know which techniques to use. Typically, products labeled as "sanitizers" are not cleaning agents. As such, when using "sanitizers", it is important to clean all equipment, bottles, carboys, etc. thoroughly prior to sanitizing:

There is one thing that the homebrewer mustn't ever forget: all around us (and especially on us!), there are invisible bacteria, germs, and stray yeast, and they would all like to get into your beer and infect it. A number of steps must be taken throughout the beer production process to prevent this. Since the heat from the boiling process sanitizes the wort, sanitation prior to boiling is not as important. However, once the boil is finished, and the temperature of the wort has dropped below 160f, every caution must be taken to achieve sanitary conditions for your brew, all the way until you pour the final product into a glass and drink it.

• All equipment and vessels that come into contact with cooled wort and fermented beer must be sanitized, as should your hands and any other part of your body that comes into contact with said equipment. This list includes:
  • Carboys, buckets and other fermentation vessels
  • Chillers
  • Spoons and utensils used to stir
  • Racking equipment
  • Bungs, stoppers and airlocks
  • Bottles, caps and kegs
  • Any other miscellaneous equipment that touches the wort/beer

• Sanitizing kills off most of the bacteria, etc., that are present on the equipment, thus preventing infection of the wort/beer.

Sanitizing with a Sanitizing Solution

The standard sanitizing process involves submersing the equipment and vessels in a chemical solution specifically designed to kill bacteria. There are many different products available for this purpose.

Betadine 

An iodine based medical sterilizer available from Chemists in the UK. At the appropriate concentration can be used as a no rinse sanitizer. Extended use or too high a concentration will stain plastic equipment.

Bleach 

The most economical solution for the beginner. Bleach can be obtained easily and cheaply. Simply mixing a few capfuls of bleach into 5 gallons of water gives you an easy sanitizing solution. The big drawback of bleach is that it must be rinsed off of all equipment thoroughly prior to using it. This becomes exceedingly time-consuming when sanitizing bottles, etc.

Iodophor 

An iodine-based sanitizer, with the benefit of not requiring a rinse after use.

Star-San 

Its main ingredient is phosphoric acid. Rinsing is not required, and it contains a foaming agent, allowing it to sanitize all the nook's and crannies of your equipment.

Potassium Metabisulfite 

Sometimes used in the brewing industry to inhibit the growth of wild yeasts, bacteria, and fungi. This is called 'stabilizing'. It is used both by homebrewers and commercial brewers alike. It is not used as much for brewing beer, because the wort is almost always boiled, which kills most microorganisms anyway.

Sodium Metabisulfite 

Commonly used in homebrewing preparations to sanitize equipment. It is used as a cleaning agent for potable water reverse osmosis membranes in desalination systems. It is also used to remove chloramine from drinking water after treatment.

Sanitizing with Heat

Heat can not only sanitize, but even sterilize, brewing equipment without requiring chemicals. However, most home brewing equipment is made up of materials that are heat sensitive, such as plastic or vinyl. Some home brewers do use heat to sanitize or sterilize metal or glass equipment, but due to the danger of burns and the relative ease and safety of chemical sanitizers, this is not recommended for most applications.

The primary use of heat sanitizing is during bottling. Given the tedious task of sanitizing as many as 50 bottles per 5-gallon batch, the idea of batch sanitizing and drying all at once is enticing.

Heat can be used to sanitize in several ways:

Boiling Water 

Equipment used in the boil does not have to be sanitized beforehand, because boiling water is hot enough to sanitize the water for brewing purposes. Some home brewers use the same principle to sanitize other equipment, by boiling it or filling it with boiling water. One common use of boiling water is to sanitize metal bottlecaps. However, this is one of the most dangerous sanitation methods, and is not recommended for most equipment.

Dishwasher 

The dishwasher can be used, without dishwashing soap or chemical drying agents (such as Jet Dry), to heat-sanitize glass bottles, as well as dry them in the same cycle. The rack in most dishwashers makes it the perfect vessel for this method.

Oven 

While not as easy as using the dishwasher, the oven can still serve to heat-sanitize glass bottles at certain temperatures. However, care must be taken not to heat or cool the bottles too quickly, as they will break. It is a good idea to put the bottles in the oven while it is cold, and let them slowly warm up along with the oven's preheat stage, so as to avoid breakage due to thermal shock.

Cleaning Products

Mechanical cleaning

Various bottle brushes.

Rinsing with Water 

Rinsing with water is typically acceptable if there is no caked-on residue of any kind. If you use bottles, it is best to thoroughly rinse the bottles out right after your pour the beer into a glass.

Bottle Brushes 

Brushes come in various sizes and shapes, and allow the user to scrub the inside of carboys, bottles, and other hard-to-reach places.

Bottle Jet 

This is an invaluable tool for cleaning bottles and carboys. The neck of the bottle/carboy is placed over the tip of the Jet, and when pushed down far enough, it triggers the lever and spray-cleans the inside of the vessel.

Chemical Cleaning

OxiClean 

Relatively inexpensive oxygen-based multi-purpose cleaner. Often used to clean carpet stains and as a laundry additive, it also does an excellent job at cleaning various brewing equipment. Mix with warm water and soak the equipment in the solution. OxyClean as also a miracle-worker when it comes to removing labels from re-used bottles. An overnight soak in oxyclean, and most commercial bottle labels fall right off - even the most stubborn labels are no match for OxyClean. However, since it is oxygen-based, OxyClean will oxidise aluminium kettles, etc., leaving a dark grey tarnish on the surface.

Soda Crystals 

PBW (Pro Brewery Wash) 

Comes in granulated form, and is mixed with hot water. Equipment is then soaked for 30 minutes or more, and subsequently rinsed thoroughly with hot water. Works in a similar fashion to OxyClean, without the oxidizing effects on aluminium. Excellent for removing caked-on boil residue from kettles, as well as hardened krausen/yeast residue in carboys.

All in one cleaner/sanitiser

• One step
• Bleach

What do I do next?

Once you have cleaned and sanitized your equipment, you are ready to move on to the next step in the Beer Brewing Process: Making the Wort.