Last night during bottling I had my caps sitting in a small plastic bowl with sanitizer and my wife mentioned a weird smell described it as rotten eggs. Mind you this was 3/4 of the way through the bottling. The beer smelled fine and looked fine but does star San interact weird with some plastics?
Weird smell from sanitizer
- Thread starter strick88
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Mix up some fresh Starsan and see if it has the same smell.
Really old Star San can develop a fishy aroma. Still seems to work tho.
Just bought this one 3 weeks ago so idk
I made multiple batches and none did. I didn’t smell it though
So other batches of Starsan smelled OK, and just the one in the bowl of caps had the rotten egg smell? Did it smell before you put in the caps? Trying to isolate the bowl from the caps. Maybe the bowl had some debris that the acid broke down?
I'm still using the same 32 oz bottle of concentrate I bought around 2015, and no strange odors. It doesn't go bad unless something gets in it.
I have found that the water used with my StarSan makes a huge difference. Tap water (Detroit water) = slimy and cloudy sani within hours. distilled water = smooth sailing for months. I had 2.5g of distilled water & sanitizer mix, it was 4 months old and still had the proper PH and was not moldy or smelly.. I still replaced it with fresh but I was surprised how long it seemed to last given no minerals (trace minerals?) to react with.
I'd guess something in the water or maybe the container used caused a reaction. FWIW one of the main ingredients in StarSan is a sulfonic acid, I think that is where the stank comes from.
Bottom line, it is well worth the $3 for a 2.5G jug of distilled water. I use 33-50% of it in my strike and HLT so I have some laying around during brew day.
I'd guess something in the water or maybe the container used caused a reaction. FWIW one of the main ingredients in StarSan is a sulfonic acid, I think that is where the stank comes from.
Bottom line, it is well worth the $3 for a 2.5G jug of distilled water. I use 33-50% of it in my strike and HLT so I have some laying around during brew day.
StarSan is acid based and that acid will react, not with the plastics, but with the metal I used StarSan to sanitize bottle caps and the ones left at the end all rusted. Now I dump my caps into boiling water and I have no more rust issues.
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You know those plastic seals on most bottle caps are supposed to absorb O2 when they get wet don't you? If you wet them in mass like that, then the reaction that absorbs the O2 is probably done with by the time you finish capping if not earlier.
I don't even sanitize mine. I just pull out of the bag what I need and crimp them on the bottle.
I don't even sanitize mine. I just pull out of the bag what I need and crimp them on the bottle.
I occasionally get a sulfur smell from my Starsan, but it does contain sulfur trioxide, so it shouldn't be too surprising. I find that the smell seems to come through more depending on the type of water I use, but that could just be in my head. The smell dissipates and has never come through in my beer.
BrewerBrad82
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