Head retention

[richlong8020]

Hey I was wondering... When talking about keeping and maintaining good head retention and not using soap to clean everything, at what point does that come into play. Cleaning primary? Cleaning secondary? Your bottling bucket? Bottles?

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

[501irishred]

Guess the simple answer would be "yes" to all. It's not that you "can't" use soap, but it is more difficult to rinse 100% off and can cause all kinds of problems if you don't. In some cases I have used dish soap to clean things like my mash paddle, thermometer etc (just easier to do some things in the kitchen), but care is needed to rinse until you think it's all off, then rinse again!

 

[derbycitybrewer]

I sometimes use soap to clean my glasses but I make sure I wash them off with very very hot water. Most of the time I use just hot water and sponge. Another are u all grain? I always add 4-8 ounces of cara pils to my mash for good head retention. Cheers

 

[richlong8020]

I wish I was at the all-grain level but not yet. So I guess the next question is what's the recommendation on a non-soap cleaner. I have OxiClean that I use on bottles and soaking. Would that work?

 

[501irishred]

Yep, OxiClean will do fine. There is still a rinsing "issue", in that you need to make sure you rinse with hot water BEFORE it dries. If allowed to dry, it will develop a white film that is harder to remove than baked on DME! PBW is the other alternative, but is more expensive. There are charts, graphs, and reports with really long words that say PBW is the ONLY way to go, but personally haven't seen much difference in the two. They both work........