Fact check: PBW vs Oxyclean

[Piratwolf]

Greetings, HBT!

I was listening to an interview with the head of FiveStar (StarSan). He stated that PBW is superior to Oxyclean b/c the latter lacks a chelating agent and a surfactant.

Can anyone back this up? And more importantly, how important is a chelator?

Thanks for any insight!
--pirat

 

[BrewingViking]

All I can say is oxyclean ate through one of my pots and fivestar has never done that. I've also left fivestar in pots and buckets for weeks and it was still good and oxyclean had mold in it after a week.

 

[seminoleAle]

Oxyclean works for me. I use the free version - free of dye and perfume. Never had a negative issue but I don't leave in my equipment for longer than a hour because it does its duty before that time. It is a lot less expensive than pbw. I guess the pbw people would say it is better because they want you to buy it

 

[jtejedor]

I don't want to spend the money so I just combine oxyclean with tsp substitute and it seems to work as well as pbw. I never leave it on my equipment for extended periods of time so can't comment on that.

 

[dwarven_stout]

The two are functionally different. Chelators remove metal ions, and surfactant is essentially a fancy word for detergent.

That said, you can get similar results with Oxyclean and a little dish soap or TSP for half the price. If you have really hard water, PBW might be worth it, but it's not worth it to me. Your call.

 

[TwoBearsinaBathTubBrew]

Oxyclean may work in a pinch in some cases, but when it comes to vessels that have been storing beer for an extended period of time such as kegs and fermenters, they build up a good amount of "beer stone" which can cause some gross after flavors in incoming brews, and PBW will eat away at any kind of beer stone, whereas oxyclean doesn't contain the same chemical composition as PBW, so in the name of beer I'd say shell out the couple extra bucks for the right product

 

[ryclo]

add some TSP-90 to your oxyclean free and you have PBW. Much cheaper!

FYI - The guy is not comparing starsan to pbw, he is comparing oxyclean to pbw...

 

[Piratwolf]

Thanks for the responses. Sounds to me --with the exception of the "beer stone" requiring a chelating agent--there's not much to choose from.

FWIW, I will say that over the course of an hour interview I came to think very highly of the FiveStar guy and doubt that he was just trying to make a buck. He seemed more interested in people getting effective cleaning. Doesn't make him correct about PBW being best, but I think he was honest in his convictions

Cheers!