Home brew cleaning product recommendation

[Kenpachi Z]

I've recently started home brewing and i have a hard water problem at my house i use store bout spring water for my brews but is cleaning my carboys and siphons with my house water going to mess up my brews because i bought some PBW home brew cleaner but my carboys and wide mouths and still looking dingy from the hard water when they dry ....should i use a specific kind of cleaner or what ?

 

[Jag75]

Welcome to HBT !

No issues with cleaning with your water at all. I have hard water as well . I just turn stuff upside down and let it dry . You can do the same with your siphon( i just read your other thread) Just swing it around like a mad man to get most of the water out , then place it in a vertical position to finish drying.

As for Star San using RO water works better then tap. The solution gets really cloudy due to PH . When you mix with RO water it stays clear for a long time.

Welcome to the hobby. Search the forums , you'll find a ton of helpful advice.

 

[Kenpachi Z]

Thanks for welcome and advise ..... What exactly is RO water ? Also i bought one of those hand pump auto syphons with the bottler wand and i added an inline beer filter but it had you heat the hose with hot water to mold it to the syphon pump head and the wand i cut the hose in half and added the inline filter the same way so its kinda hard to swing it around now lol

 

[day_trippr]

"RO" water = Reverse Osmosis water

Many of the popular cleaners used in home brewing will leave a white-ish haze behind, especially when used with "hard" water.
That haze can usually be removed with a diluted acid rinse - like white vinegar and water, or sometimes a standard Star San mix...

Cheers!

 

[Kenpachi Z]

Cool ill def try that ....will the white haze mess with my brews ?

 

[day_trippr]

Nah - it's just a carbonate precipitate. Harmless if occasionally not so great looking

Cheers!

 

[Rickdude]

Hey guys,

Just a couple of things to mention-- First the carbonate scale is not exactly harmless. The scale structure provides a hiding place for microorganisms during the sanitizing step. If there's a film or haze, definitely clean it off. I prefer citric acid because it has a great balance between safety in handling and efficiency. (A really fast solution would be 3% in water, but 1% in water would probably be sufficient).

Second, when you have cloudy Star San, it means that the biocidal surfactant (that's the stuff that penetrates the cell membranes) has complexed with the water hardness (calcium or magnesium) and is no longer active. Best not to use it when it's cloudy.

Rick