Cleaning and Head Retention.

[Calder]

Clean glasses in hot water, no soap, as soap film kills head.

Also, don't use soap in bottles or fermenters for the same reason.

Should this practice be carried all the way back to boil pots and anything that comes in contact with the wort?

 

[flars]

You could carry the no soap theme back to the boil kettle. Nothing wrong with that.
At some point you will need to use some sort of soap for a tough clean up.

I use soap on hard surfaced items from the boil kettle to bottles and glass carboys. I never use soap on plastic or vinyl. I know the risks. I do have the set up to practice a very good rinse routine without making a mess.

So far the only problems I have had is a fresh glass from the cupboard.

If you can do a thorough job of rinsing, I don't see a problem with using soap.

 

[Trox]

I haven't used soap on any of my items; if anything needs a really major cleaning I just use some of the Kroger equivalent of Oxi-Clean. Most everything comes clean with hot water, soft rag, and a little elbow grease. Then again nothing hat gets dirty ever sits long before I'm cleaning it.

 

[IL1kebeer]

I use soap on my mash tun.

The same sponge wipes the kettle that I oxiclean soaked so I would imagine soap gets in there too.

I soap my funnel, my large stirring spoon, various plastic parts (mostly different varieties of hoses), my thermometer, and possibly a few other things that I'm forgetting.

I oxiclean my kegs and all of their parts and fittings; however, my soap sponge wipes the inside lips of the opening of the kegs.

I occasionally soap my beer glasses as well, but 90% of the time I just use hot water to rinse them out.

The main thing is to rinse very well. I make sure that everything is completely rinsed, and then I rinse again for good measure. It doesn't take me a lot of time to do this. I have been doing it this way and typical beers always have a lasting head until the pint is gone. I'll post a pic later tonight when I pour myself a beer.

I should disclose that I use soap that is meant for washing baby stuff. Not sure if this makes a difference but I have no head retention problems so I continue to use it.

 

[Beernik]

I don't use soap on any brew equipment. All my bottles and glasses go through the dishwasher. But I don't use a rinse aid. I use distilled white vinegar in my dishwasher because of the hardness of my water and it works better than any rinse aid I ever tried.

Head retention and lacing isn't a problem for me.

 

[IL1kebeer]

I use soap on my mash tun.

The same sponge wipes the kettle that I oxiclean soaked so I would imagine soap gets in there too.

I soap my funnel, my large stirring spoon, various plastic parts (mostly different varieties of hoses), my thermometer, and possibly a few other things that I'm forgetting.

I oxiclean my kegs and all of their parts and fittings; however, my soap sponge wipes the inside lips of the opening of the kegs.

I occasionally soap my beer glasses as well, but 90% of the time I just use hot water to rinse them out.

The main thing is to rinse very well. I make sure that everything is completely rinsed, and then I rinse again for good measure. It doesn't take me a lot of time to do this. I have been doing it this way and typical beers always have a lasting head until the pint is gone. I'll post a pic later tonight when I pour myself a beer.

I should disclose that I use soap that is meant for washing baby stuff. Not sure if this makes a difference but I have no head retention problems so I continue to use it.

Edit - Here are pics of a pour. This is over the span of about 20 minutes. Head is still there.

 

[prohl84]

It's not soap itself so much as the surfactants in it if I am not mistaken. I get great head retention and lacing and I wash my glassware in a regular detergent wash + rinse aid. I use generic oxyclean in my fermenters and occassionally my kettles (for de-labelling bottles)- definitely a ton of surfactants in that. I rinse thoroughly and starsan has always cut the oxyclean as far as I can tell.

Are you lacking foam or just covering you bases? Throw a little flaked barley in your next brew maybe.


IL1kebeer: that is a cool room overlook thing or whatever you call that. Pretty beer too.

 

[Wynne-R]

By ‘soap’ I’m going to assume we are talking about dishwashing detergents. Soap is the salt of a fatty acid, detergents are synthetic and do better in hard water.

I don’t think it’s the detergent that kills the head, rather something that has been added to the detergent as a rinse agent. I washed 4 beer glasses a while back with cheap generic automatic dishwasher powder. Bam! Flatter than day old beer. I tried washing it with PBW and fake Oxi. No help. Bon Ami didn’t help. Tried the old ‘wet the glass and see if salt sticks to it’ trick. Success! Scrubbing the glass with salt efficiently removed whatever it was that ruined my beer glasses.

If you suspect your beer glasses are contaminated, wet them and then sprinkle salt in the glass. If it’s dirty the salt will stick unevenly, if at all. Scrub it with your fingers and rinse. You will probably have to rinse a few times to get most of the salt.

Sláinte