Newbie with cleaner and sanitizing questions

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GPa Bob

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I've been brewing beer for 4 or 5 years and have been considering brewing wine. I finally just bought a merlot kit and am planning on making it. I'm trying to use existing stuff I already have. The instructions say to use one step cleaner. Is this any different/better from pbw? They also say to use metabisulfate powder for sanitizing. Again, is this different/better than starsan? Thanks in advance.
 
Yeah, one step is basically an oxygen cleaner like oxiclean or pbw

Metabisulfite can be either potassium or sodium based (K-meta, campden tablets, etc.) And is often used to hinder wild yeast and bacteria in the must before pitching your desired yeast.

You'll see recipes that say to add fruit to water and sugar, dose with metabisulfite, then wait 12-24 to pitch yeast...

I would still use Star San to sanitize the fermenter, and also dose the must if the directions call for it...

Some instructions also call for K-meta every other racking to reduce oxygen...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campden_tablet

tl;dr
use both Star San and kmeta
 
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I've been brewing beer for 4 or 5 years and have been considering brewing wine. I finally just bought a merlot kit and am planning on making it. I'm trying to use existing stuff I already have. The instructions say to use one step cleaner. Is this any different/better from pbw? They also say to use metabisulfate powder for sanitizing. Again, is this different/better than starsan? Thanks in advance.

One Step is similar to PBW, but I like it better because it leaves less of a film residue behind. I always follow those cleaners with a flush of clean water, regardless of what they say. Metabisulfite can be used as a sanitizer, but most of us use StarSan.
 
OneStep is great product. Been using it a few years as a cleaner and sanitizer. I have not had any infection issues.
 
Call me pedantic but I don't love the term brewing when making wine. Fermenting maybe? With that out of the way, I brew beer but less so lately it seems. I like sour beer. I also like all the various country wines I have been making. I don't have much to add to this conversation other than making beer is more labor intensive up front whereas wine requires more work and tweaking in the long term. And patience is much more of a virtue.
Cheers.
 
The thing about K-meta is that it is used as a three-fer by wine makers.
1. at a dilution of about 2oz /gallon of water you can use it as a sanitizer.
2. In the concentration of Campden tabs (1/8 t /gallon) you can use this to kill wild yeast and bacteria in fruit or juice 24 hours prior to pitching your yeast and
3. In the same concentration you can add K-meta to your wine each time you rack to help maintain enough free SO2 in the wine to inhibit oxidation.
 
The thing about K-meta is that it is used as a three-fer by wine makers.
1. at a dilution of about 2oz /gallon of water you can use it as a sanitizer.
2. In the concentration of Campden tabs (1/8 t /gallon) you can use this to kill wild yeast and bacteria in fruit or juice 24 hours prior to pitching your yeast and
3. In the same concentration you can add K-meta to your wine each time you rack to help maintain enough free SO2 in the wine to inhibit oxidation.
4. In the same concentration when added at the stabilization stage (for back sweetening) it prevents lactic acid bacteria from metabolizing potassium sorbate into Geraniol, a serious wine fault.
 
Are you ceratain about that Maylar? I thought that it was that concentrations of K-meta can prevent MLF and it is the reaction of Sorbate with MLF that creates the geranium smell but I could be wrong.
 
There's probably some connection between the two, because Malolactic fermentation in the presence of sorbate yields hexadienol which also stinks like rotting geraniums. But I haven't seen any references to K-Meta killing LAB, so I dunno. It is however a 4th reason why we use K-Meta.
 
Relatively new to winemaking, but one thing I can add to what the more experienced folks said is buy a larger container of PBW. To make one gallon of wine, I went through a lot of it (sterilize equipment before putting it in the primary fermenter, racking a week or so later to a glass carboy, and a couple more rackings, then bottling.

I found that the PBW I was using to sterilize in a 1-gallon container was about 4 tsp (I measure by weight as per the instructions, but one time I measured the volume to get to the recommended weight and it was just about dead on 4 tsp). It is so much easier to submerge the equipment in a 5-gallon bucket (which needs around 0.4 cup of PBW if filling the 5-gallon bucket most of the way).
 
PBW I was using to sterilize

Couple things here...

1) You're not really sterilizing anything... You're sanitizing. It's a difference of degree, perhaps, but still a difference.

2) PBW isn't really a sanitizer. It's a cleaner. Does the stuff in PBW sanitize? Perhaps. But you should probably rinse
after cleaning w/ PBW... Thereby unsanitizing whatever sanitization you achieved.

OneStep is actually no-rinse and *can* sanitize, though I don't think it's officially recognized as a sanitizer. It too is just a cleaner...
Officially.
 
+1 on this process- Clean soak with HOT PBW, rinse thoroughly with HOT water, rinse again with HOT water, then sanitize with starsan.

Autocorrect tried to say Starman, but I don't think that'll work.
 

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