sanitising all equipment best method.?

[guypettigrew]

It's all been said already, but Starsan is wonderful.

If I want to drop a hydrometer into my FV to see what's going on I just spray it with Starsan, give it 30 seconds, then drop it in. No worries.

The bottle will last me ages at a dilution rate of 4ml of the concentrate into 2 1/2 litres of water.

Guy

[Horatio]

Starsan all the way.

[Kev888]

Just to mention: The grain isn't sterile and so neither is the wort berfore you boil it; the heat is what sterilizes during the long boil. So the boil is something of a threshold in AG brewing and means two key things:

• Theres not much to be gained by rigourously sanitising anything before use that then sees the unsanitised grain or wort. Clean things after use of course, as you would with normal kitchen/food preparation pans and so on, but in terms of microbiological sanitation I'd put all my attention into things that see the wort post-boil, after the heat is no longer sanitising them (like the FV and anything used to transfer wort to it).
• Its important to remember on brewday that anything pre-boil isn't sanitised once its seen the grain/wort (even if you sanitised it beforehand). So if you use the same equipment (tubing, spoons, sampling jugs etc) pre-boil and post-boil you should sanitise them in between.

Cheers
Kev

[AdyG]

I was using the chlorine based stuff as you put 3 teaspoons in 10 litres and swill it around the keg or FV and leave for 10 minutes, then rinse a few times with cold water.

Everyone seem to recommend Starsan diluted in a sprayer, but is it ok to do the inside of a king keg? How do you make sure you get full coverage though? Surely swilling around a larger quantity of liquid would be better for kegs etc

[Jocky]

Yes, swill around a litre or so in a keg, it'll foam up and stick to the sides a bit, helping sanitise everything.

As long as the keg was clean you can reuse the starsan solution.

[AdyG]

Cheers Jocky, about to run out of my current stuff, so will get some ordered with my next online ingredient shop.