Making water for starsan vs buying it

[EoinMag]

Thanks Kev. Yeah, convenience is the factor that attracts me as well.

I don't believe it costs more to use CRS compared to buying the equivalent spring water. e.g. If it takes 5ml CRS to treat 5L of tap water then the cost is tiny and not as much as £1 for a 5L bottle of Ashbeck (I guess Asda Smart price is cheaper though!) 250ml of CRS is only £1.75 so we are only talking a few pence of CRS for 5L.

I will do an experiment I think.

Well I know that water is certainly easier for me to get than CRS which has to be ordered online and adding postage comes out a lot dearer than 1.75.

[OldThumper]

Ah well EoinMag, you need to plan and then order your CRS at the same time you order other ingredients. I use quite a lot of CRS so always make sure I have some in.

Kev, I did my experiment and it took only 1ml of CRS in 1 litre of tap water to get the pH below 3.0.

1. Add 1.6ml of Starsan to 1L of tap water. Stir and notice how cloudy the solution goes.
2. Take pH reading. Mine was well above 3 as shown on the right hand side Litmus paper in the picture below, so clearly no good as a sanitiser.
3. Add 1ml of CRS to the solution and stir. Take pH reading and as you notice by the left hand litmus paper the reading is well below 3.0 now.

I don't know if adding the CRS before the Starsan will reduce the cloudiness.

If the pH of the StarSan solution is all you need to really worry about (and not the cloudyness) then I am happy I will try and confirm that cloudiness is not an issue (some research needed and I know this question has been asked here before) as long as the pH is below 3.0.

1ml of CRS costs about 0.7p, so treating 5L will cost me 3.5p as opposed to cost in time from stocking up with shop bought water, not to mention the extra small expense, if of concern to anybody

[EoinMag]

Ah well EoinMag, you need to plan and then order your CRS at the same time you order other ingredients. I use quite a lot of CRS so always make sure I have some in.

Kev, I did my experiment and it took only 1ml of CRS in 1 litre of tap water to get the pH below 3.0.

1. Add 1.6ml of Starsan to 1L of tap water. Stir and notice how cloudy the solution goes.
2. Take pH reading. Mine was well above 3 as shown on the right hand side Litmus paper in the picture below, so clearly no good as a sanitiser.
3. Add 1ml of CRS to the solution and stir. Take pH reading and as you notice by the left hand litmus paper the reading is well below 3.0 now.

I don't know if adding the CRS before the Starsan will reduce the cloudiness.

If the pH of the StarSan solution is all you need to really worry about (and not the cloudyness) then I am happy I will try and confirm that cloudiness is not an issue (some research needed and I know this question has been asked here before) as long as the pH is below 3.0.

1ml of CRS costs about 0.7p, so treating 5L will cost me 3.5p as opposed to cost in time from stocking up with shop bought water, not to mention the extra small expense, if of concern to anybody

It depends on where you research, the guys from five star say that cloudiness is an issue, but then it is normally related to hardwater and pH issues. The question is though, when you add the CRS are you then still left with a no-rinse solution of safe acids? Or are you producing something that is now in the realm of "must be rinsed". You really don't know what chemical cocktail you have just created at this point.
You could try by firing off an email to the lads in five star they seem to be pretty amenable to answering questions. You'd want to know the formulation of CRS though when asking as they are yanks and don't use it from what I can see.

[Kev888]

Interesting - thanks for posting the experiment, good to get some figures on it, though I realise my tap water could be slightly different. I guess once you know what it takes you could treat the water before adding the starsan, in case its not a reversable thing.

And also thanks to both of you for hammering this out together - I'm very limited in chemistry myself; I'm sure i could do eventually stuff to get the water the right PH but I'd have no idea if any method I chose would affect the starsan's performance in other ways.

On the cloudiness issue, I remember someone doing a test (I think on an american forum) which showed you can 'in some circumstances' get cloudiness without the PH of the solution being out of range, but the general feeling seems that you don't get it the other way around - i.e. if it is out of range it will be cloudy.

Cheers
Kev

[EoinMag]

Interesting - thanks for posting the experiment, good to get some figures on it, though I realise my tap water could be slightly different. I guess once you know what it takes you could treat the water before adding the starsan, in case its not a reversable thing.

And also thanks to both of you for hammering this out together - I'm very limited in chemistry myself; I'm sure i could do eventually stuff to get the water the right PH but I'd have no idea if any method I chose would affect the starsan's performance in other ways.

On the cloudiness issue, I remember someone doing a test (I think on an american forum) which showed you can 'in some circumstances' get cloudiness without the PH of the solution being out of range, but the general feeling seems that you don't get it the other way around - i.e. if it is out of range it will be cloudy.

Cheers
Kev

Cloudy is generally not good, according to the five star owner.

Have a listen to the following podcast which featured an interview with the owner of five star chemicals who make star san.

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/archiv ... search=yes

[OldThumper]

OK, I will fire an email off to Five Star and if I get a reply I will report back.

Cheers chaps.

[AnthonyUK]

Could you please clarify something - Are you actually buying water to make up your sanitising solution with?
Sorry for being the newbie but it sounds a bit excessive.
I may be no expert but using water from a condensing drier/dehumidifier is surely full of bacteria having been sat around with nothing to inhibit it.

[JackA]

But they're making sanitiser; any bacteria will be killed

[EoinMag]

Could you please clarify something - Are you actually buying water to make up your sanitising solution with?
Sorry for being the newbie but it sounds a bit excessive.
I may be no expert but using water from a condensing drier/dehumidifier is surely full of bacteria having been sat around with nothing to inhibit it.

My water here in Dublin is very hard, so when I add star san to the water it reacts with the minerals in the water and goes cloudy. Something buffers the water as well, because no matter how much star san I add to the water I can't get below about pH 3.4 which is really the very upper end of effectiveness of star san. I am prepared to use such a solution once, but am not bothered with keeping it for reuse. Rather than this I go to Halfords and buy the 5l drums of battery top-up water that they have, this is deionised water, I mix this up and straight away it hits pH 3 and stays there, this I then put back into the container and use the next time, and the time after that, then test the pH again at some point and if it's drifted up slightly then I add more star san to sweeten it again.
Because of the reuse of the water it is not that expensive.
The water from the dryer though is possibly a good alternative and I will begin to collect this, the acid in the star san will soon sort out any issues with contamination of the water in the condensor, so that is not actually a worry.

[AnthonyUK]

But they're making sanitiser; any bacteria will be killed

It's sanitising not steralisation so I'm guessing MOST bacteria will be killed but I get your point.
Is it not better to start off with something that contains less of the thing you are trying to get rid of?
I live in a very hard water area so I'll think it's best that I avoid starsan. I'm currently using plain Oxy cleaner from a £ shop.

[EoinMag]

But they're making sanitiser; any bacteria will be killed

It's sanitising not steralisation so I'm guessing MOST bacteria will be killed but I get your point.
Is it not better to start off with something that contains less of the thing you are trying to get rid of?
I live in a very hard water area so I'll think it's best that I avoid starsan. I'm currently using plain Oxy cleaner from a £ shop.

Star san is possibly the best thing to have happened to home brew sanitising ever....It's worth getting the right water for.
Oxy is a cleaner, star san is a sanitiser, they are not the same thing.

Star san is non rinse and reusable..but make your own calls.

[AnthonyUK]

I thought that the active ingredient is Sodium Percarbonate which breaks down into hydrogen peroxide in water which is a sanitiser.
One which is cleared for use in foodstuffs too.

[EoinMag]

I thought that the active ingredient is Sodium Percarbonate which breaks down into hydrogen peroxide in water which is a sanitiser.
One which is cleared for use in foodstuffs too.

Nope that's not star san, star san is a blend of acids and works simply by virtue of it's pH being too low for bacteria etc to live in and the fact that while it kills bugs it is actually potable when mixed to the correct proportions for usage so its' completely no-rinse.

[AnthonyUK]

Nope that's not star san, star san is a blend of acids and works simply by virtue of it's pH being too low for bacteria etc to live in and the fact that while it kills bugs it is actually potable when mixed to the correct proportions for usage so its' completely no-rinse.

No it's Oxyclean

I believe it is Phosphoric acid in starsan.

I've listened to a few Podcasts on TBN and they are very compliemntary about Starsan too.

[EoinMag]

Nope that's not star san, star san is a blend of acids and works simply by virtue of it's pH being too low for bacteria etc to live in and the fact that while it kills bugs it is actually potable when mixed to the correct proportions for usage so its' completely no-rinse.

No it's Oxyclean

I believe it is Phosphoric acid in starsan.

I've listened to a few Podcasts on TBN and they are very compliemntary about Starsan too.

Ah ok you were talking of oxyclean, my apologies. Are there no perfumes in there? In any case it's not a recognised sanitiser and comes firmly into the cleaner camp.