I don't feat the foam, BUT...

[MalFet]

Clearly you are not big on customer service, whatever your line of work. Serving ALL customer requests is the best way to keep that customer. Lying and scheming simply to push your product will not be tolerated by the market. Surely there are snake oil salesmen out there, but the word "NEVER" might be a tad strong.

I don't think anyone is accusing Charlie Talley of anything even remotely approaching dishonesty. I met him once, and he seems like a great guy. He makes fine products and he does a really great job with customer support. He believes in his product, as he should. He has done a lot for homebrewers over the years, and he has every drop of my respect.

And, I can relate to that. I do coffee import/export, and I am extremely proud of my product. I can count the number of complaints I've had over the years on one hand, and I do my best to run an honest business. At the same time, some people believe that coffee is bad for you. I think they're wrong, but I also recognize that I'm not an unbiased source. If you are going to have a commission to evaluate the effects of coffee, I probably shouldn't be on it. That's not because I'm dishonest, but because I've spent the last ten years thinking about how great coffee is. It's just the way I think, and any perceived flaws are going to take a lot longer to sink into my skull than into that of someone objective.

I feel I need to side with Revvy here a bit. The concept that oxygen will be more readily absorbed from air inside of a bubble than just the air inside of the keg is not reasonable, rather is the result of an over-active homebrewer's imagination. The reason you don't fear the foam is because even with a carboy/keg half full of foam, the volume of starsan that is actually in there is very small. Ever tried to measure the thickness of a bubble? Just put the beer in the thing and drink it.

If the bubble is thin, that means the air inside the bubble is taking up most of the volume, no? I think that was the point.

 

[nasty_rabbit]

Well, the chemical doing the sanatizing (phosphoric acid) is food safe (its in cola) and may be consumed in part by yeast.

However, the ingredient (anionic surfactant) that makes the foam (dodecyl benzene sulfonic acid) is not any food product and is NOT EATEN BY THE YEAST. It is not considered toxic, but you are ingesting the equivalent of small amounts if dishwasher detergent.

Does that bother you? Personal choice. I keep my surfactant ingestion to a minimum, so I get rid of the vast majority of the foam after sanitizing. No infections thus far after hundreds of batches.

I work for a company that produces dodecyl benzene sulfonic acid (DDBSA). It is produced by many surfactant manufactures so this is not proprietary information but it is in toothpaste. Unless you do not brush your teeth you do ingest it, I hope, at least twice a day. On the other side of the coin though, it is used by industrial tire manufactures for tire cleaners.

 

[helibrewer]

I use 2 cups to sanitize a carboy, gently swirling it around, then dump it back into the santizing bucket. There are no large amounts of foam to deal with. I have no idea what all of the food products that I consume (including commercial beer) have been through and what type of sanitizers they have been in contact with but I have little fear of anything that StarSan contributes, it's just too minute to worry about.

 

[kh54s10]

1) Fill the carboy with about 1-1.5 gallons Starsan

I think this is your problem. I use about a cup or two. Swirl it around. Not too much foam.

 

[rhinoceroceros]

...it sure does annoy me sometimes.

I switched to Starsan from Iodophor shortly after I started brewing, I love the ease of use. But, when sanitizing a carboy, I always end up with 1/2 full of foam. I know, I know, it's supposed to protect and sanitize as it rises up, but what annoys me is when it pushes out through the top as I'm filling, carrying some of the wort with it, causing a sticky mess.

Any ideas on how to tame the foam? I really don't want to use Iodophor for the carboys, but it seems like the easier thing to do, I just get overly worried about the chemical coming through if I don't let it drain

I had the same issue for a while, but have started using less starsan more efficiently, i.e. putting a small amount in the carboy/bottle/bucket and swirling to coat, pouring out starsan and have almost no bubbles. I always used 30 seconds as a good contact time, but as long as it coats well it will probably take about that long to dry.

 

[Spartan1979]

If you are purging your kegs, the rise and drop of pressure should be collapsing the foam in any case, no?

I'm not purging them with the lid on. I run some co2 through the out tube hopefully pushing some of the air out at least creating a blanket of CO2 in the bottom of the keg.

I haven't been arguing that you should get the foam out your keg, not fearing your foam is probably correct. I just don't like the idea of that being in my finished beer. Just a quirk, but I don't like broccoli either.

 

[MalFet]

I'm not purging them with the lid on. I run some co2 through the out tube hopefully pushing some of the air out at least creating a blanket of CO2 in the bottom of the keg.

I haven't been arguing that you should get the foam out your keg, not fearing your foam is probably correct. I just don't like the idea of that being in my finished beer. Just a quirk, but I don't like broccoli either.

I got no gripes with that.

For what it's worth, I did some experiments on keg purging a while back. Nothing too technical, just seeing what I had to do to make a lighter go out. The CO2 didn't seem to behave like a "blanket", but rather mixed quickly and thoroughly with the oxygen. To get the oxygen out of a non-sealed keg, I had to run the tanks for quite a long time.