how long can I leave starsan?

[JeffoC6]

It bothers me that I used distilled water and no matter what, by the time my brew process is up, the water is cloudy, so I dump it. That shouldn't be happening.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Several posters have said that a Star San solution remains good so long as the pH remains low. I listened to an interview of Charley Talley, creator of StarSan, and it's not clear to me that this is correct. He says in the interview that the killing power of StarSan comes from the combination of the acidic aspect and the anionic soaping aspect (he had a different name for the soaping aspect--detergent, surfactant?--I can't remember). He specifically says that either alone is inadequate, and if I heard him correctly, he says that what's degraded by hard water is the ionic soaping aspects. He said that using distilled water, which lacks the minerals that degrade the anionic properties, would result in a very long-lasting solution. Me, I don't know, but if I heard him correctly, it is not the case that you can assume effectiveness of a low pH StarSan solution. I should go find the link to that interview, but it's on here somewhere. Anyway, my takeaway was cloudy solution = ineffective sanitation.

Yes. It is a combination of the surfactant allowing a more throrough wetting and the acidity for the killing power. But, lack of foamage in solution is a better indicator that the calcium has hardened the solution enough to reduce it's efficacy.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

It bothers me that I used distilled water and no matter what, by the time my brew process is up, the water is cloudy, so I dump it. That shouldn't be happening.

It would bother me too. Have you tried using a variety of packagers?