What is the best homebrew sanitizer?

Chances are you found this page because you are looking for the best sanitiser to use with your homebrewing.

Smart move, brewer.

You know why right?

You know because every decent beer maker knows that to make a good beer you need to have all your equipment and bottles sanitized so that your brew is not spoiled by nasty bacteria.

Have you ever had a batch ruined by a lack of proper cleaning or sanitization?

It’s a real bitch when that happens.

So then, let’s cut to the chase.

Here’s a list of what are the best sanitizers to use when making beer or even cider or wine.

Choose what you want but no whining about ruined beer if you don’t properly prepare your gear before you make that wort!

Star San - the best comes first

If you want to use a product that will destroy all the microorganisms that could screw up your beer, then Star San is the sanitizer for you.

It's described formally by the manufacturer as "a self-foaming acid sanitizer ideal for brewing, dairy and other food and beverage equipment."

It is an extremely effective bactericide and fungicide and is not affected by excessive organic soils. Star San also reduces water spotting and can be used without rinsing under the proper concentrations. STAR SAN is a blend of phosphoric acid and dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid."

So as bonus then, when using Star San there is no need to rinse it from your beer bottles or the carboy when can be pretty handy when all you wanna do is make beer!

One can use Star San as a spray on or for soaking gear and beer bottles. Used at a ration of one ounce to 5 gallons of water it will do a damn fine job of keeping those bacteria at bay.

It is probably the most well known and well recommended sanitizing product known for home brewers.

This bloke said of his use of it in his Amazon review:

"This works great and is very easy to use. I just followed the directions on the bottle and had no issues. I like that it doesn't have to be completely rinsed just allowed to dry."

The only down side is that the manufacturer knows this and you can be charged an arm and a leg for it!

Iodophor

Iodophor is another popular sanitiser adopted by the beer brewing community. Iodophor has been traditionally used by the food service industry and medical industry to sanitize equipment but it works just fine on your brewing gear.

Iodophor is a three-things-in-one iodine product. It's a detergent, germicide and sanitizer.

The solution takes approximately 10 minutes to sanitize your equipment and like Star San, it's a no rinse product when used at the recommended concentration.

This Amazon review is telling:

"I had been using bleach to sterilize my stuff but too often had bleach aftertaste in my beer. Since moving to BTF Iodophor, my batches taste great and have the hoppy aftertaste I want and not a mix of hops and bleach."

It is a good idea to keep it away from your clothes because it will stain them. So wear old clothes when preparing your solution and be careful!

That said it is odorless, tasteless, and easy on your hands.

Powdered Brewery Wash known to many as PBW

This cleaning product was originally used widely used in commercial breweries (hence the name) but over time countless home brewers across the country have cottoned on to how they can use it for sanitizing their brewing equipment. 

It's one of the most commonly used sanitizers and for good reason as it works!

Go onto any beer brewing forum and you will find seasoned beer makers raving about this product.

Go on, Google it now and you'll quickly find we are not exaggerating about how good this cleaning product is. If you are looking for some guidance about how to clean your brewing equipment, they will probably say use this powdered wash.

PBW is also pretty handy for removing beer labels from bottles and so is alkaline brewing wash.

Make your own substitute PBW with basic ingredients

You can also make your own version of PBW as a substitute using ordinary home products.

Basically what you do is combine a home brand like Tide, Oxiclean, or Napisan with a product that has metasilicate as an ingredient - we've found that many home DIY brewers use a cleaner called Red Devil TSP/90 to fill that part of the equation. Mix them together in 70 / 30 ratio in favour of the laundry soak and you've become a home DIY sanistizer!

Now this last one is a perhaps a bit of a surprise however, it's tried and true for many home brewings.

Are y'all ready for this?

Laundry soakers as sanitizer

That's right, it's probably already sitting on your laundry shelf.

Here's a handy trick, this chemical is basically what you might know as Tide or Napisan or any product with a brand name that tries to use the word 'oxy' as in oxygen cleaning or oxidization agent.

That's right, most of the fancy laundry soaking products have sodium percarbonate as a key ingredient!

Chances are you already have some in your home laundry so feel free to use that.

I have done so several times with no problems whatsoever!

Bleach

When I was a young lad I used to work as a cleaner in a butchery. Once of my jobs was to clean the bin which housed all the meat scraps and bone that could not be made into mince or whatever.

That bin sat outside all week until Thursdays when it was emptied and then it was my job to clean it.

Because you know, maggots.

So I would prepare a bleach solution to clean it out, kill the maggots and most importantly get rid of that smell that was created when the hot sun beat down on that damn bin all week.

One week I managed to accidentally kick the bucket of bleach solution over and it went all over one of my brown boots.

No big drama right?

No drama until I looked down a short while later and my boot had turned mostly orange.

And that's when I learned truly the power of bleach!

But brewers have known for much longer that bleach can be used to clean home brewing equipment.

It's pretty cheap, readily available at supermarkets and it does the job of clean bugs and bacteria in its path.

All you need to do when using bleach is to make up a solution with the ration of 1 tablespoon of bleach to 1 gallon of water ( or 4 mls per liter). You then need to soak for about 20 minutes and the santization should be done.

The thing about bleach though is that it can have a bit of a strong pungent smell. While at the suggest use ratio, you probably don't need to rinse it off your gear, we strongly recommend that you do.

Given that Star San is pretty much good to go after less than a minute of contact, we suggest that if you can afford it, you use that and don't muck around with bleach.

It might stop up from changing your shoe color too!

-

There are other options out there too - caustic soda, using boiling water, cooking in an oven and using an autoclave etc.

So there you have, there's plenty of choices out there for the best homebrewing sanitizer. To our mind, it comes down to three areas of choice:

• The more you spend, the better the quality and ease of use - so it's clear then that PBW and Star San are the best bets there 
• If you are looking for a mid range price, try a product with sodium percarbonate 
• If you want cheap and cheerful with a longer sanitization time, you'd go with a standard bleach. 

In the end, all roads lead to Rome! Clean clean clean!!

Leave a Comment bleach, PBW, sodium percarbonate, star san

Best no rinse brewing sanitizers for beer and wine brewing

Every brewer wants to make good beer or wine. There are many ways to achieve a good brew but there is one thing you must do to 'make it so' and that is to sanitize your beer brewing equipment.

If you don't, you run the real risk of infected beer or cider which turns out to be undrinkable.

And where's the fun in that?

So using so-called 'no rinse' brewing sanitisers is an excellent way to keep your beer free of unwanted microorganisms in your beer or wine.

So what is a 'no rinse' brewing sanitizer?

It's a solution that once you have sanitized your brewing equipment and beer bottles, you do not need to rinse off. 

In contrast, if you've used caustic soda or bleach, you will need to rinse your equipment and that just takes precious time that not many brewers have. I have read that some people consider bleach a no-rinse sanitizer but I think it can leave a smell behind which most people would want to remove by rinsing so we can discount it as an option.

So 'no rinse' sanitizer it is then.

So what are the best ones to use? Are they all the same or do some do a better job than others?

There's a couple of schools of thought on how to go about choosing the best brewing sanitizer. You can go with commercially oriented solutions like Star San and my personal favourite, home-based options from your laundry like sodium percarbonate.

Let's start with Star San as it is a well-known option within the brewing and wine making communities for cleaning and sanitizing brewing equipment.


This proven bug killer that will lay waste to all the microorganisms that could screw up your beer.

It is described by its maker as being a "self-foaming acid sanitizer ideal for brewing, dairy and other food and beverage equipment." The key ingredients of it are a mix of phosphoric acid and dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid.

We say it is a very effective bactericide and fungicide!

So about this no rinsing business? It can be used without rinsing under the proper concentrations. This means following the amount per litre instructions! Star San should be used at a ratio of one ounce to 5 gallons of water.

This means Star San is perfect for sanitizing your empty beer bottles or the carboy.

The beauty of Star San is that it can be used both for the 'spray on' method or for soaking equipment and beer bottles in a tub or bath.

It is probably the most well known and well recommended sanitizing product known for home brewers. Check out the price on Amazon.

Using Iodophor as a no rinse sanitizer

Iodophor is very popular one rinse sanitiser used by many a home brewer. Iodophor is well established in the food and beverage industry as a go-to sanitizer and it works just fine on your brewing gear.

The key active ingredient is iodine, an element that's been found to be wonderfully good at killing germs and preventing contamination.

It's so good, hospitals and doctors use it during surgery to keep the human body free of bugs. Home users often use it with cotton buds for simple first aid hygiene.

So you know it's safe to use on your children, it will work pretty well on your beer kit!

It doesn't work well as a spray solution - it's best to soak your gear with Idophor for at least 10 minutes to sanitize your equipment properly. When it is used at the recommended concentration level with water, it is a no rinse brewing solution.

While Idophor is odourless, tasteless, and easy on your hands it's very colour fast and will stain your clothes so be careful when mixing up your solution!

Why don't you One-Step into my office?

With One Step powdered wash you can lean your beer and wine making equipment quickly and easily with this non-toxic, oxygen-based cleaner. 

Your mixing directions are to use 1 tablespoon with your water and wait 2 minutes of contact time (so it's a bit faster working than iodine based sanitizers). Once your gear has been soaked long enough, it is ready to use.

The main ingredient of One Step is 'sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate' aka sodium percarbonate. How it works is quite clever. The powder obviously dissolves when combined with water, which in turn releases the oxygen from the carbonate to form hydrogen peroxide – a chemical which is well known for its sanitizing and disinfectant abilities. '

And that's a point we should make - this product is marketed mainly as a cleaner, however the hydrogen peroxide does double duty as a sanitizer.

This product a one step, no rinse because once hydrogen peroxide completes its work and it breaks down simply into oxygen and water which is safe as houses. Check out the price on Amazon.

Speaking of oxygen based cleaners, here's my personal favourite:

Sodium Percarbonate - as a no rinse solution found in your laundry

Go and have a look in your laundry room right now. 

Go on.

I'm waiting...

Did you find a laundry soaker?

Some Oxi-Clean, Tide or Napisan or any other Oxi-named cleaner perhaps? If you did, chances are you've got a cleaner that does double duty as a sanitizer in the form of sodium hydroxide. We've have raved and raved for years about how good sodium percarbonate is as a sanitizer. 

If it's safe enough to use on your clothes, it's safe enough to use on your beer gear. 

If you are a bit nervous about using laundry powder, you can buy sodium percarbonate in a pure powdered form quite cheaply and easily on Amazon.

So there you have it, a few suggestions on some easy to use, cost effective no rinse sanitizers for brewing. There are plenty of other options out there  - you can use other cleaners like PBW to the same effect. Whichever way you choose to sanitizer your beer, do it well, do it properly and just do it.

If you don't, you will genuinely increase the odds of getting an infected beer, and frankly, if you've had it happen to you, you'll know what a stink and unpleasant experience that is!

Many brewers are trying out Craftmeister's Alkaline Brewery Wash as they consider it performs quite well.

2 comments cleaning your equipment, equipment, idophor, no rinse, sanitization, sodium percarbonate, star san

How to remove labels from glass bottles for home brewing beer

Once more unto the breach...

Removing labels from beer bottles can be the most frustrating exercise in the world right?

What if I told you I've learnt the secret of easily removing those damn sticky labels.

You'd be thinking I pulling your leg.

I'm not though.

I've done the research.

I've done the experiments.

I have scrubbed labels.

I have licked labels. 

I have OxiClean and I have used my damn fingernails to get those last stubborn bits of residue off.

I have also pulled labels off completely intact in one move!!

So much so, I hate beer labels.

But, due to my work, for you dear home brewer, I've got 6 or maybe 7 tricks and tips on removing beer labels from bottles. They are not magical fixes but they sure make things a lot easier and less frustrating.

The good old overnight soak

The first thing you need to do is accept that life is like a box of shitty beer labels, you never know and some of them are as stubborn as your mother in law after a couple of gins. 

Some labels will simply come off after a 24 hour soak in cold soapy water. Others will not even soften after three weeks in the bucket.

That's just the way is. Accept it, and you will feel so much better for it.

Yes, the most simple way to remove a beer label is to let the glass bottle soak in a bucket or tub overnight.

Fully submerged.

If you get a beer label that's willing to soak up water and with glue that dissolves easily enough, there are good odds you will be able to pull the whole label off from the bottle 100 per cent intact and leave no residue on the glass.

Such occasions are rare and must be celebrated by sharing your homebrew with your neighbours and workmates.

IF there is some glue residue, then scrub with a kitchen brush under a stream of hot water may assist in removal. Else, try a hot wash in the dishwasher. 

Baking soda is not just for making hokey pokey lolly...

If the overnight soak method doesn't float your label off intact, you might want to try baking soda.

Baking soda is like a magical cooking ingredient that housewives from back in the day is also good for using as toothpaste and removing axel grease.

Baking soda is actually a handy chemical called sodium bicarbonate and it's a true and time tested remedy - it will help remove labels. With your soak, add in a few tablespoons of the soda, stir and leave to soak for 24 hours.

If there is some residue after removing the label, a quick scrub with steel wool or plastic kitchen scrubber (think 3M cleaners) should do the trick.

Ammonia

Did you ever see Robocop?

The first one, not the shitty remake. I saw that as a young lad and one scene that stuck with me forever was when one of the bad guy's henchmen gets his comeuppance with a bath of toxic waste.

It melts his skin right off!

Like sucking chicken of a slow-cooked chicken drum.

And seeing as that's how we really would like our labels to come off, let's ratchet the solution up.

Ammonia.

It's a hydrogen and nitrogen compound (NH3 is the scientific name) and it dissolves your label like it was human flesh bathed in toxic waste.

Be warned though, ammonia is a HARSH chemical as it is very caustic. Don't get it on you or inhale it and we suggest you do the soak outside.

It doesn't do anything to the glass bottle though, so it's a viable trick.

Never mix it with bleach as a chemical reaction will occur, exposing you to poisonous gas (from memory something like chloroform is created).

So maybe only try to use ammonia if you have the most stubborn of beer bottle labels. Before using the bottles you will need to thoroughly rinse them in plenty of water.

And then rinse again just to be sure.

So if the suggestion above scared you, let's slow down and have a think about some other chemical agents that might be handy.

When using chemicals such as ammonia or sodium hydroxide, we firmly recommend you take safety precautions and use disposable gloves and wear suitable eye protection.

Have you ever heard of Oxiclean? 

It's a massively popular laundry cleaner / stain remover. It's good because it makes whites whiter and brights brighter or something. Maybe it's good because one of the active ingredients in OxiClean is sodium percarbonate.

This wonder chemical is an adduct of sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide, the active ingredients of OxiClean and many other popular laundry soakers.

I typically use sodium percarbonate all the time and this is the actual truth, about an hour ago I was adding sodium percarbonate to a tub of beer bottles that needed the labels removed. As I was standing outside in the dark, garden hose in hand I thought, you know, it would probably be a good idea make a good post about how to remove beer labels).

So, I personally can vouch for using sodium percarbonate to remove beer labels.

It still can be a dog of a process though. If you get a stubborn beer label, you're going to need to use some elbow grease.

Steam cleaning

You could also try using hot steam from a kettle. We haven't done this but we think this idea would probably work if given enough time. If you had to do twenty bottles, it wouldn't be worth the energy.

PBW - Powdered Brewery Wash

This cleaning product is widely used in commercial breweries and microbreweries and countless home brewers across the country have twigged that they can use it for cleaning their own brewing equipment. 

Because PBW is so strong it will also make short work of beer labels as well. Give it a soak overnight and you might just be surprised at how easy it will be to get the labels off.

So in summary here's several methods you can try to remove beer labels from glass bottles:

• Overnight soak in water
• Baking soda
• Caustic soda or ammonia
• Oxy Clean or sodium percarbonate or ordinary laundry soak
• Steaming
• Powdered Brewery Wash (or a homemade brewing wash that contains Red Devil)
• Giving them a round in a dishwasher

Many brewers are waking up to how good alkaline brewery wash is as well. 

You could also try using a jet blaster but you'd need to be able to securely hold the bottles!

These tricks also work just as well for wine bottles but you will have to be prepared to get in there and do some scrubbing on those stubborn labels, it's just a fact of life.

Leave a Comment bottling beer, removing beer labels from bottles, sodium hydroxide, sodium percarbonate

How to use Sodium Percarbonate to clean and sanitize beer brewing equipment

Using Sodium Percarbonate to clean and sanitize your beer brewing equipment 

The first mantra of beer brewing goes something like this:

Make sure your equipment is clean and sanitized!

There are many ways of going about this and today we are going to discuss our preferred method which is by using sodium percarbonate.

Usually provided in powdered form, it is very soluble in water which makes it very handy for quick preparation and an easy soak of your equipment and fermenter.

This is our preferred method as it works well, it's 'no rinse' and it's very easy to order in bulk online.

If you've ever tried to buy sodium percarbonate from a specialist beer brewery shop, you'll know that you can get a small bottle or container of it that will cost you a small fortune.

If you can buy it in bulk from an online supplier, you'll do well to nab some as using it will effectively bring down your cost per brew.

How to use sodium percarbonate to clean beer equipment

Your mixing instructions are simple. To use sodium percarbonate you simply add it to water.

Be generous with it! A health scoop or spoonful is awesome.

I like to add hot or even boiling water to the fermenter drum so as to get the action of the chemical happening pretty quickly.

The boiling water also helps kill off any nasties hiding about as well.

I close the drum so the vapour gets up the sides and then when things have cooled a little bit, I give it a pretty good shake.

Watch out for hot water leaving the hole in the drum lid!

Or fill the drum all the way to the top and leave to soak overnight.

Don't confuse 'cleaning with chemicals' as 'cleaning your beer gear'

Don't confuse 'cleaning' with sodium percarbonate as cleaning your bottles and equipment or the fermenter.

For me, that is a very different process.

Your equipment needs to have as much gunk and much removed as you possibly can before you use the cleaner.

Get stuck in with a soft brush and some really hot water and make sure your fermenter is really damn well cleaned and clear of any residue from your last brew. Pro tip - you can use PBW cleaner (or make your own brewing wash!).

Giving your utensils a run around in the dishwasher never hurts as the heat kills bugs.

That line of scum that forms at the top of the water line?

You don't want to see it before you use the sodium percarbonate.

In my view, its job is the final part of the cleaning process.

Once you are ready, give your beer making gear a really long soak.

I've seen people say a quick dip of ten minutes is all you need but I say at least half an hour and frankly if I remember before brew day, I soak the inside of fermenter in the percarbonate solution overnight.

My thinking is the longer you leave it, the more bugs that will be killed, in addition to the good oxidization cleanse that will happen.

But an oxidisation clean is not sterilization right?

Fair question and a correct point.

So if percarbonate is just a cleanser, do I need to sterilize as well?

You may wish to consider using a sterilizing agent like Star San but in my experience, if you have cleaned your equipment and then soaked it very well, you shouldn't really need to use a sterilizer.

This is because the sanitizer should have killed most of the bugs, especially as there's an argument that the percarbonate does all you need to provide excellent brewing conditions.

I use this method exclusively.

The choice is yours.

If you can get cheap sterilizer and have the time, go for it.

You might already have sodium percarbonate in your laundry as a laundry soaker!

Here's a handy trick, this chemical is basically what you might know as Tide or Napisan or any product with a brand name that tries to use the word 'oxy' as in oxygen cleaning or oxidization agent. 

That's right, most of the fancy laundry soaking products have sodium percarbonate as a key ingredient!

Chances are you already have some in your home laundry so feel free to use that.
I have done so several times with no problems whatsoever!

Non scented house brands are awesome.

If you do use a scented brand, your fermenter might smell like some lovely lavender field so be wary of that and rinse with copious amounts of water if need be.

Or maybe you'll add a nice trait to your beer!

If in doubt about home cleaners, ask for the mandated information safety data sheet

If you are really worried about what's actually in your laundry soaker, you can ask your supplier for the information.

It's law in many countries that such documentation is available.

In New Zealand for instance, all such products must be registered by law and a safety data sheet be provided on demand which contains the ingredients used in the product.

You can then use that knowledge to decide if you wish to use it but we may be overthinking things a little bit here. We've never had any issues and totally recommend using laundry soakers as a cheap source of percarbonate.

So is it safe to use everyday laundry cleaner products with my beer?

If the thought of using what gets your 'whites whiter', Oxyclean or whatever Oxy style product you've found in your laundry freaks you out, take a step back and have a Kit-Kat.

These products are designed for washing clothes and yes, the percentage of sodium percarbonate is far less than buying percarbonate by itself in bulk but it works. It really works.

So why do it? 

Because it's cheap and it works.

It really does.

If you are concerned that an 'off the supermarket shelf product' will leave strange smells or residues, you can do two things:

1. You can choose to not use it and get a 100% per cent sodium percarbonate product (New Zealand brewers should check out Trade Me), or you could just rinse after the soak.

or

2. Flush your equipment and fermenter out with a lot of cold water. A trick I then do is boil the kettle and finish off the rinse with boiling water.

I'm not sure if it's a mental thing but I consider this to be the final thing that kills any lingering bugs.

I have used home brand sodium percarbonate laundry soaker products myself many times and have never had a problem.

Not once.

You could also consider using this next magical chemical: Star San

If you've ever read any internet forum about beer making and noticed that any time a keen beer brewer talks about cleaning or sterilizing, along comes a dude claiming that Star San is the best product he's ever used!?

But what is it really and is it effective?

Star San is a bactericide and fungicide. It can be used without rinsing under the proper concentrations. Star Sans' main ingredients are a blend of phosphoric acid and dodecylbenzenesulfonic acid.

That's a long way from Kansas, Dorothy!

Many beer brewers swear by this product for their kill bug killing needs, so if all the other chat about percarbonate has put you off, you might want to consider this product.

If you can't find any Star San at your local beer shop or supermarket, it may be purchased online at Amazon.

The Caustic Soda option

As an aside, if you've got say a really stubborn fermentation scum ring that just won't seem to wash off, you could consider using caustic soda.

Beer in mind that it is an extremely strong cleaning agent and it needs to be used with necessary precautions such as gloves and eye protection.

Do not get caustic soda in your eye, that agent will literally give you a chemical burn.

Believe me, when I was a young lad I worked at a chicken fast-food style restaurant and while preparing a solution of caustic soda to clean the floor, a single drop got in my eye.

It burnnned so bad.

A hospital visit and an eye patch for a week followed.

So clearly, you will need to do an excellent rinse after. Just be bloody careful.

Most beer shops or hardware stores stock the soda - it's commonly known as sodium hydroxide.

What about the sachets that came with my home brew kit. Should I just buy more of those?

Your standard home brewing kits will come with a sachet of cleaner, and it's probably advertised as no rinsing required, the so-called 'no rinse'. It is quite simply likely to be a sachet of sodium percarbonate.

Don't get sucked into buying a sachet at $1.50 a pop.

If you are going to continue to brew in the long term, like many of your ingredients, you'll want to consider buying in bulk.

What is the difference between sodium percarbonate and sodium carbonate?

A fair question.

Have you ever heard of soda ash?

This is sodium carbonate.

It is a salt made from sodium and carbonic acid. It is quite commonly used in the manufacture of glass, paper, rayon, soaps, and detergents.

Sodium percarbonate is an adduct formed from sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide.

One more thing, percarbonate sometimes is called sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate. As if it could get any more complicated...


Bonus tip!

You can clean your deck with oxygen bleach!

Use approx 4 litres of water and 1 cup of sodium percarbonate to clean your outdoor wooden deck. That would suit a deck size of about 10 square meters.

Bonus tip  2!

Don't confuse sodium bicarbonate for percarbonate - you're not making a cake!

So there you have it, a brief summary of how to use sodium percarbonate and the ways to buy it online, and also to find it in your home laundry.

Bonus tip 3!

Before capping your beer, check that the bottle is clean and there are no creepy crawlies hiding in the bottom... 

If you're in the United States, consider buying some sodium percarbonate from Amazon.

5 comments caustic soda, cleaning your equipment, mixing instructions, soda ash, sodium carbonate, sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate, sodium percarbonate, star san, sterilization