How long after sanitizing a carboy can you still consider it clean?

[malisk]

Pretty self explanatory... If covered afterward to prevent dust or anything getting in, how long can you expect it to remain safe?

 

[scrawbag]

if it is covered airtight then indefinately, in reality i would give it a week. then again with 3 cups of water and a pinch of steraliser and 1 min of time your resteralised. just give it a rinse with solution

 

[WilliamSlayer]

Really I would give it 12 hours. If you haven't gotten around to using it by then, the minute or so it takes to spray some sanitizer on it is worth it IMO.

 

[Shooter]

I don't, by default consider a sanitized surface clean unless it has gone through a cleaning process prior to sanitization, but I know what you're asking.

If fully sealed hard to say, but, if there is any chance of further contamination, I would be concerned once the sanitizer is dry. I suppose it depends on what you're using to sanitize.

 

[sweetcell]

there are bacteria, wild yeast, etc floating about in the air (actually on dust). so even though you're not allowing in air, you've captured some air in there - so you might have enough nasties to make something bad happen. or nothing might happen.

technically, things can start to so south as soon as the sanitizer has dried. i don't have an answer as to how long is too long, however it's not that hard to throw some sanitizer in there just before you use the vessel, slosh it around and dump out. i have a dedicated bucket of star san on hand at all times. after swirling around in the fermenter i return to the star san to the bucket and re-use it. star san can keep for months if you keep it relatively free of crud and don't dilute it with other liquids.

 

[Polboy]

After use i wash my carboys with oxiclean, rinse 3-4 times with water and add 1-2gal of starsan solution, shake 2-3 times over 5-10min to cover whole carboy, dump starsan and let it drip dry for few hours then i put tin foil over the carboy mouth and thats it, i never sanitize again, i use it days, weeks or months later basically when needed. 2 years of brewing and never had infection (yet i know

 

[DoctorCAD]

Liquid k-meta solution is a wet sanitizer, meaning it is only considered a sanitizer as long as it is wet.

In practice, this is rarely followed...things dry before you can get to using them.

A quick misting right before use is what I do. Easy...

 

[Phipps]

If sealed *completely* and done under perfectly sterile conditions, indefinitely. I would imagine that it would be safe for quite some time assuming it was properly cleaned before and rinsed well. If you used a no rinse sanitizer before sealing it, without properly rinsing it, that may supply micro-organisms to propagate, like wild yeast. If rinsed well and there is no residual source of nutrients then organisms don't really have what is needed to propagate. You may have introduced organisms or spores on dust but no more so than normally when prepping a batch and without nutrients to propagate they would be in the same concentrations as when you first sealed it. But if using a no rinse or improper washing, residual waste, etc. will affect the amount of time it remains sterile enough to use. Just be safe and give it a squirt with a no rinse.

 

[WVMJ]

A lot of people freak out about storing carboys, worrying about them being sterile and something sneaking in there and waiting for some food so they can have a population explosion and ruin everything. After you clean your carboy good enough to use it again let it dry, stuff a clean papertowel in the top and put it away where its not going to get dirty. No need to coat the inside with sanitizer, the worse thing you can do is store them wet even with a sanitizer in it, complete waste of effort. It doesnt need to be airtight, you dont have to wrap it with layers of duct tape to protect them. If you are storing a clean carboy for a couple of years do it a favor and sell it to someone who will use it!

Clean, dry, plug, store until needed without worry.

WVMJ

Pretty self explanatory... If covered afterward to prevent dust or anything getting in, how long can you expect it to remain safe?

 

[Shooter]

Clean, dry, plug, store until needed without worry.

Agreed, I clean, drip dry and then store it. It gets sanitized right before I use it next time.