Old 09-08-12 | 09:43 AM
  #52  
zacster
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Joined: Jul 2004
Posts: 8,162
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From: Brooklyn NY

Bikes: Kuota Kredo/Chorus, Trek 7000 commuter, Trek 8000 MTB and a few others

I'll second the StarSan. We homebrewers depend on it to sanitize everything. The brew process converts the grain starch to fermentable sugar, and this sugar is basically microbe food. If you put the wort (boiled grain sugar) into anything that isn't sanitized you get infected beer in no time flat. Everything that touches it once you've turned that burner off needs to be sanitized. It is also no rinse, so you take your equipment out of the bucket and use it, and I usually insert my hands in it too so they are sanitized, even though my hands shouldn't be touching the beer. It also somehow acts as yeast food, so that is also a benefit for brewers. We soak clean bottles in it, empty them, and fill them without rinsing so there's always a tiny bit of starsan in every bottle.

I've actually used it to sanitize my bike bottles after they've sat all winter, although I don't do it on a regular basis.

It also kills ants.

For brewers, the only things used are StarSan, Iodophor, bleach and boiling. None of the other things I've read in this thread would be sufficient, and most homebrewers stopped using bleach because the chlorine will leave a taste.

Last edited by zacster; 09-08-12 at 09:47 AM.
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