Star San Mistake....oops

[knelson]

I absoutely love Star-San but apparently I misjudged its strength. I mixed up a batch a couple of weeks ago becuase I needed to sanitize my blow off tube and some other equipment. I left the sanitizer in my bottling bucket for storage.

Well 3 days later when fermentation slowed down and I could remove my blow off tube, I washed it out thouroughly (using my bottle brush to get the bunk out of the middle of the tube) After that I stuck the tube and the bottle brush in the sanitzer. Here as my mistake. I completely forgot about them until last night when I went to take a sample of the beer to measure the gravity.

I tossed in my beer thief to sanitize it, and noticed a very "tinny" smell. It smelled like a penny. Not thinking anything of it, I continued with my sampling. Then I thought I should probably get the blow off tube and the bottle brush out of the sanitizer. When i grabbed them, they were all slimy and smelled very strongly of oxidation.

The only thing I could think was that the sanitizer oxidized the handle of the bottle brush. I dumped the sanitizer and rinsed everything out thouroughly.

I am praying that I did not contaminate my beer by sticking the beer thief into the carboy. Is there any chance that the sanitizer was still good but just dirty?


Thanks!

 

[TipsyDragon]

check its PH. if its below 3 then your good.

 

[DrawTap88]

I did somewhat of the same thing...on purpose. I stuck my blow off tube into a 2 liter full of star san & water for 2 weeks. When I pulled the end of the tube out of the bottle I noticed that it had made the end of the hose "cloudy."

So, now I've decided to not let anything other than that blow off tube to sit in star san for any longer than an hour.

 

[Lcasanova]

There's nothing wrong with the hoses being cloudy after sitting in Starsan, it's just the soap residue sticking to the hose and it won't harm your beer. After I run hot water through my hoses for a few minutes they are no longer cloudy.

 

[TheGeek]

Another "pro tip" for star-san is dont put your plastics into the water before mixing the sanitizer, I did this once and a couple of my plastics are "scarred for life" turning a black ladel I had white in places that even after several washes won't come out. *facepalm* That stuffs potent when not diluted!

 

[knelson]

lcasanova- its not the cloudiness that I'm worried about. But since the handle of the bottle brush is metal, there was black stuff everywhere in the water and inside the blowoff tube. When I grabbed the tube out of the bucket, it was nasty slimy. I had to soak the tune in dish soap for awhile and run hot water through it to get the black slimy stuff out

I'm not too worried about the beer. But from now on I will make sure and not leave anything in the sanitizer for extended periods of time.

Tipsy Dragon- How do you measure pH?

 

[wyzazz]

PH strips, the LHBS should have them.

 

[NorCalAngler]

I have also clouded my siphon hose with StarSan. Not thinking much about it I put my metal capper in StarSan and let it soak while I was filling bottles and when I pulled it out 20 minutes later the acid was eating at the metal and took away its shine. StarSan is no joke.