Sanitizer dilution on small scale

[PTBYOOJ]

Starsan bottle lists a dilution measurement of 1oz to 5gallons of water. What does everyone do for making a small batch of sanitizer, say if you just want to sanitize a thief tool or something like that.

I've just been eyeballing it, do you actually take the time to use the correct proportion, even on a small scale?

 

[samc]

1.5ml to 32 oz spray bottle is my usual mix. I use either a measuring spoon or the jeweler digital scale from Amazon for under $10. A graduated eye dropper works well.

 

[jwalker1140]

I do something similar to what samc does except I use a 1.0 ml pipette to draw the sanitizer into a 12 oz spray bottle (0.55ml added to enough water to = 12oz is the same strength as 1oz to 5gal). You can open the spray bottle, dump it into your carboy or whatever, slosh around and funnel back into your spray bottle for future use.

I'm not a 'belt-and-suspenders' kind of guy but eyeballing this small of a volume makes me nervous. Way too easy to be wildly off of the mark. Sure, I spent $1 on the pipette and $11 on the pipette pump from Amazon, but my bottle of sanitizer will last for years and years and years. I'll more than make up for the cost of the extra tools.

 

[RogueGoose85]

Next time you do a 5 gallon batch of sanitizer, fill up a spray bottle. It will keep for a couple months. Its a quite the useful tool

 

[edmanster]

I buy distilled water in gallon jug and make a gallon at a time for my spray bottles.. I use the sanicalc app from the android store for a easy reference for amount and a syringe to measure...

 

[Revvy]

Children's medicine dropper from any drugstore. It works perfectly to measure out the 2mls required for my 1 quart spray bottle.

 

[Revvy]

Next time you do a 5 gallon batch of sanitizer, fill up a spray bottle. It will keep for a couple months. Its a quite the useful tool

There's NEVER a need to make up a 5 gallon batch of sanitizer. Since it is wet contact, and has a short kill time, you only need to splash and swirl a little bit of sanitizer and coat everything. At the most on any give time I might make up 2 gallons of sanitizer.

But you can put a gallon of it into a fermenter and splash it aroung, and if you're using distilled just put it back into the gallon.


You can also just use a spray bottle to sanitize everything. I like to have some to dunk, and also to move through my autosiphon and spigots and such, so I usually make up a couple gallons on brewday. A big bottle of starsan usually lasts 2 years for me, and I brew kinda heavily.

I can't think of any reason to be making a full 5 gallons of the stuff.

 

[starsailor]

My wife's a Nurse Practitioner. So I had her get me a syringe without a needle in the right size. Then I just measure out the right "dose" in ml for whatever size batch I'm making and mix away. It's got super accurate graduations, albeit in ml, and is really easy to draw out of the top reservoir on the big StarSan bottle without even getting my hands close to the concentrated chemical. Use a calculator to do the arithmetic for the amount(s) you need in ml. The Calc app in Windows/Mac and on most phones too can do the conversions for you.

As a safety note, just make sure to rinse it out when you're done or you'll be dripping concentrated chemical all over the place. That's a bad thing!

I tape a small section of tubing to the side of the bottle to always hold the syringe ready to draw up a mix. I also write my typical precalculated mix amounts on the side of the concentrate bottle in Sharpie to make it easy and quick. I do the same thing for beer line cleaner, window cleaner, 2-cycle oil, and fuel stabilizer too.

 

[BrewThruYou]

I use an oral syringe from CVS similar to what Revvy uses. It holds 10ml. I do 6ml to gallon of water.

 

[befus]

Most pharmacies have smaller syringes they will give to you if you ask, at least in smaller towns like my local Walgreens.

 

[kincade]

If you want the exact dilution ratios for smaller batches of sanitizer they are listed here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/smaller-dilution-ratios-inside-starsan-iodophor-304982/