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An Introduction

First of all let me introduce myself. My name is Paul Gunn, I am a homebrewer, beer lover and businessman, in that order. I own a homebrew shop in Phoenix, Arizona called GunnBrew Supply Co. My customers and fellow professionals in the brewing industry here in Phoenix tell me that I

personally am the most knowledgeable shop owner in the area. I have been drinking beer since I was a child, brewing for 5 years, and am a recognized beer judge by the Beer Judge Certification Program. I have been advising homebrewers professionally for 2 1/2 years. I do not consider myself an "expert". I consider myself to be a mostly self-taught homebrewer that has learned just enough to get myself in trouble. As you will see in the coming months I will tell you exactly what MY experience has been. If I have no experience with something I will tell you that I have no experience with it and then try to give you advice on what I have read or have been told. If I venture an opinion I will most certainly express it as an opinion and not a fact. You as a homebrewer will find errors in my advice occasionally and I will get flamed. This is OK and I encourage heated debate on these subjects, hopefully I will learn as much as you. The important thing is that we have fun brewing and can enjoy the results of our "labor". The only rules that I will dictate are that you have valid homebrewing questions (no questions such as 'which amber ale is the best'. That is subjective and is entirely up to the person that consumes it.), and I will not answer abusive or profane posts.

Cleaning & Sanitizing
By Paul Gunn

Without a doubt the single most important issue in homebrewing is sanitation. Without proper sanitation, you will never make a good beer. With it, every beer you brew will be drinkable and then it depends on your recipe as to whether it will be great or not. What I will try to do here is to give you a basic run down on procedures, devices, and chemicals used for the purpose of rinsing, cleansing & sanitizing. There are many "right" ways and, oh so many "wrong" ways to sanitize. It is up to you to discover the "best" way for you to do it in your particular situation and set-up.

A story I like to tell is about a "Brew-A-Thon" held in early 1995 by the Brewmeisters Anonymous brewing club that I am a member of. About 30 of us got together one day to brew as much beer as we could. Set up was the day before so when we got there (the club president's backyard), at 6:00 am on Saturday we could start brewing right away. The president woke up early the next day and lit the burners before everyone showed up. When I got there at 6:00 am I walked into the backyard

and it sounded like there was about 20 hot air balloons being filled for take-off. There were about 20 propane powered 200,000 Btu Cajun Cookers going all at once. It was quite a sight (and sound, the neighbors were in on it fortunately). We brewed almost 450 gallons of ALL-GRAIN beer that day and it took us about 16 hours to do it (an unrecognized world record for all-grain brewing).

Anyway, back to my point, of the about 15 brewing set-ups, all of them were different. No two were the same, they achieved the same result in very different ways. Each brewer had set-up his system according to his or her own needs and situation. The key is to experiment and see how you like to do it and what achieves the needed results the easiest way possible.

Cleaning

The point needs to be made that cleaning and sanitizing are NOT the same thing. You clean labels off of the bottles or sediment out of your fermenters. This does not sanitize them. To clean bottles that have gunk in them you need to soak and scrub them with a brush then sanitize them. Same with carboys. Buckets are a different issue because scrubbing with the wrong thing can ruin your plastic. If scratches develop in the plastic, that gives bacteria a place to hide. Sanitizing can be difficult if not impossible when there are scratches in the plastic. Do not use scouring pads use hot water and a soft clean sponge without soap (soap can affect the head retention of the final product).

Sanitizing

Philosophy

The idea here is that you can not completely sterilize your equipment. As soon as you expose anything to the air, it is not sterile anymore. You are sanitizing. This means that you are ridding the objects of excess bacteria and wild yeast. You, in a homebrew situation, can't get rid of all of it. What you are trying to do is MINIMIZE your risks of bacterial infection. This just takes attention to details and common sense.

Any object that the beer comes into contact with after the boil must be sanitized. This includes fermenters, water vessels, stoppers, airlocks, hoses, bottles, funnels, strainers, caps, bottle fillers, racking canes, spoons, kegs and ANYTHING that comes into contact with the beer after it has been boiled. If you oxygenate your wort, even the air should be sanitized (for you novices this is not an important thing right now). Now you must realize that you can get away with a lot and you can make good beer that way, but that award winning beer may be riding on which beer tasted the cleanest. Does this mean you need to be anal about sanitation? No, I myself do not claim to be the most sanitary brewer, but I know what I can get away with (sometimes anyway, which is why I don't win a lot of competitions). You need to know where your problems are and how to correct them.

Procedure

General

If you just practice common sense then sanitation can be very easy. When you finish using something, clean it immediately. The fermenters, hoses, racking canes bottles and everything will just rinse off fine while still wet. If allowed to dry, the sugars, yeast and other nasties will harden and be difficult to remove later. The racking canes that are too long to immerse in the sanitizer can be hooked up to the hose and filled up with sanitizer, making sure the ends of the hose and cane that will come into contact with the beer are submerged. That way the inside is sanitized and the part of the outside that touches the beer will also be sanitized. Siphoning is a common area of contamination. To start the siphon is easy by filling the hose and cane with sanitizer and simultaneously putting the cane down in the beer and the hose into a separate container below the level of the beer while pinching or somehow restricting the flow in the hose (if you are bottling with a bottle filler the valve on the bottom of the filler is already restricting the flow). As you do this release the flow of the liquid and empty into the container. You may notice there is a bubble where the hose and cane meet. Simply pinch the hose just below the cane where the top of the bubble is and the bubble will go right through the hose. As the beer starts to flow, switch the hose to the container you wish the beer to go in to.

Before you brew

Before you brew you must get clean water, if you have an R/O (reverse osmosis) system in your home this is good enough (or pre-boil the tap water). You must sanitize the container that you are going to put the water in as well as the stopper you use so the water doesn't spill.

Brewing

The brewpot does NOT need to be sanitized because it will be sanitized as you boil the wort. The spoon you use to stir the wort doesn't need to be sanitized until the last 10 -15 minutes of the boil. If you use finishing hops after you turn off the heat and you use a hop bag, the hop bag must be sanitized. If you use a wort chiller, it must be sanitized before you put it in the wort unless you put it in for the last 15 min. of the boil. The fermenter, stopper and airlock must be sanitized. If you strain the hops out before you put the wort into the fermenter, the strainer must be sanitized. If you oxygenate your wort, any hose or diffuser must be sanitized. Any device you use to retrieve a wort sample for checking specific gravity must be sanitized as well as the sample jar you put the sample into, unless you do not pour the sample back into the beer.

Racking

As you rack into the secondary fermenter the fermenter needs to be sanitized, of course, as well as the stopper and airlock. The siphon hose, racking cane and the device you use to remove a sample for the specific gravity reading needs to be sanitized.

Bottling

Your bottling bucket needs to be sanitized. The spigot in the bucket (if you have a spigot) should be removed from the bucket and sanitized separately. The siphon hose, racking cane, bottle filler and the device you use to remove a sample for the specific gravity reading needs to be sanitized. Bottles, caps and priming sugar needs to be sanitized. The priming sugar should be boiled for 10 - 15 min. before adding to the beer.

Devices

A clean bucket is the only thing that is necessary to sanitize your equipment. Although if you have them there are brewing toys and household appliances that are helpful.

The bottle washer is a neat toy, it hooks up to your faucet with an adapter and shoots a powerful stream of water into your carboys and bottles. Especially useful for carboys just after you have siphoned out the beer and all that sediment is left behind. And bottles just after you have poured the beer into a glass and have the sediment in the bottle.

The dishwasher is a device that is growing in popularity in the beer bottle sanitation world. I must admit I was very skeptical about this when I first heard about it but I am starting to accept it. After you make sure the bottle has nothing sticking to the inside of the bottle, simply put the bottle in the dishwasher upside down and run the washer WITHOUT SOAP OR SPOT REMOVER (these can leave a film which is bad for the head retention). Leave in the dishwasher for the entire heat drying cycle and you have sanitized bottles. Easy! Another nice to have device is a sanitary garbage basket. This is just a 20 -30 gallon trash receptacle that is only used for sanitation purposes.

The bottle tree is nice if you don't do the dishwasher thing. It is a device that has pegs sticking out at angles all the way around so you can put bottles on it to dry (this makes it look like it is growing bottles). These are made of plastic and come apart so you can soak them in sanitizer as well.

Chemicals

In my opinion the best chemical for sanitizing is Iodophor. It is easy to use and does the job very well. This is the same substance that most bars use as a final rinse (per the health department) on their glassware. If you have ever seen behind a bar (and who hasn't) you have seen the three compartment sinks. One has soap and an electric brush in it the next has just plain rinse water (though most places I go don't change it very often) and the next has a sanitation solution. Most use Iodophor. Just mix 1/2 oz. to 1 oz. of this liquid in 5 gallons of tap water, soak your equipment for 10 -15 min., remove from the sanitizer and shake the excess off and use it immediately. No rinsing. Easy! It will not add any flavors or aromas to your beer. The whole idea is to use the proper amount of solution to water. Too much and you could possibly get some flavor (it would take an awful lot). Another great feature of this is the color of the solution. It is Iodine based and has a lot of color to it. When added to water the water takes on a brownish-red color. When it is no longer active your solution will turn clear. Kind of a color indicator.

Unscented Bleach is another chemical that does the job well. Though I do not recommend it as highly as I do Iodophor. 2 oz. of bleach to 5 gallons of water and soak for 30 min. remove and rinse with as hot of water as you can get. Chlorine is bad for beer, so you must rinse the bleach out. Rinsing with tap water rinses the bleach out but just puts more chlorine (not to mention bacteria) from the city water supply on your equipment. If you rinse with hot water then hopefully the water has been in your hot water heater for a couple of hours and the chlorine has evaporated and the bacteria killed. Don't run out of hot water while rinsing. I used Bleach for a couple of years until I tried Iodophor and never had any problems. I just like the ease of the Iodophor.

There are products under the brand names of One Step Cleanser and B-Brite. Even though it is called a cleanser, One Step claims it is a no rinse sanitizer. I have not used this product and have never heard of anything bad about it. The only thing I can see that Iodophor has over it is the color indicator feature. The B-Brite I have even less experience with. Some people swear by it and only grudgingly try the Iodophor when I tell them I don't carry the B-Brite. I believe you have to rinse with the B-Brite though which would make it as undesirable as bleach is in my opinion. That does not make this a bad product I just have my way of doing things.

Summary

I have very lightly touched upon the surface of the whole sanitation issue. You, the homebrewer, at large have many other things that I have missed or don't know about. E-mail me the thing that works the best for you and maybe I will do an article on new ideas I have heard about. There are so many products, cleansers, devices and chemicals out there that you, as a resourceful homebrewer, will find the perfect product (homemade or store bought) for you. It would take 10 pages to list the ones that I have seen. Be imaginative, be resourceful and be clean about it.