To rinse or not to rinse

[BigPete56]

I have received conflicting advice from proprieters of HB shops regarding whether you need to rinse your equipment (K&K fermenter, bottles etc) after sanitising. Would it depend on the sanitiser you are using? My intial thought was not to rinse, as you may introduce some imperfections from tap water and would be negating the sanitisation.

[Ross]

Pete,

Get yourself a good non-rinse sanitiser. As you suspected, rinsing with water afterwards can undo all your hard work.
However, if you are topping up your fermenter with tap water, then a late rinse of water is going to make no difference to your ferment. Still a good practise though to start using one.

cheers Ross

[billybushcook]

Rince with screaming HOT water from the nearest source to the water heater I say!!!

For my mind, sanitisres / sterilisers are meant to kill micro-organisms, yeast is a micro-organism!
heat will remove all traces of chlorines etc, by the same token, I know (knew) of a few people who would pull thier water from the hot water system the day before & let it cool before mixing up a brew, the reason was that the heat killed off any bugs, chlorines & flourides.

on the subject of yeast as a micro-organism......I heard years ago that yeast is the fastest multiplying organism known to man (in the right conditions of course)
Has any one else heard of this???

Cheers, Mick.

[WSC]

I use boiling hot water from the tap - my HWS is very hot and then finish it off with no rinse.

Since I started that method I have no issue's....touch wood.

[Kevnlis]

Billy, yeast is not the fastest growing, but it is able to utilise the carbohydrates in the wort faster and more efficiently than other microorganisms and therefore "out competes" them while at the same time producing ethanol and carbon dioxide which is deadly to most infectious bacteria (from a brewers perspecitive). Some yeast also produce toxins which kill other yeast and bacteria to aid in their "take over" of the fermentation.

[Bizier]

The idea behind "no rinse" is that there is not enough residue left when used at the correct dilution rate and drained (or drip dried) properly. It is only designed to tackle what is left behind after your thorough cleaning regime. They are also usually pH specific, so once you have filled the fermenter with wort, the sanitiser is rendered useless, and should never affect yeast health.

When I used to use bleach, I would rinse multiple times with hot water straight from the boiled kettle, this produced pretty good results, but I would prefer a good no rinse sanitiser any day.

Some 'sanitisers' need to be rinsed off, which in my opinion makes them more of a cleaning product. I know sodium percarbonate falls in this category, the pink stain remover stuff might as well, but I have never used it.

[Ross]

For my mind, sanitisres / sterilisers are meant to kill micro-organisms, yeast is a micro-organism!
Cheers, Mick.

Mick,

Starsan, my non-rinse sanitiser of choice, actually becomes a yeast nutrient once mixed with wort, so you need have no fears of it attacking your friendly yeasties

Cheers Ross

[Smabb]

I would be careful of the hot water tap as a clean uncontaminated source of water.

Depends on what sort of hot water you have. If you have a gas system that heats the water as it comes through (i.e. no hot water tank) than yes it would be pretty "clean", if you have a heated tank like most people (doesn't matter how its heated) this will be the number one source of bacteria in the house.

I don't let hot tap water anywhere near a brew. Top of the list in risky things you can do I reckon.

Cheers

[geoffclifton]

Some of these sterilising powders and potions I'm sure are just retailers heaven. A few cents worth of ingredients in a container with a $10 price tag. I'm up to around 250 brews and have not had an infection and my beer is absolutely consistent. Someone made the excellent comment here some time back that we are talking clean, not sterile. We are brewing, not doing a heart transplant.

Home brand unscented regular bleach. About $1.70 for 2 liter plastic bottle. I keep a 200 liter drum filled with a half percent (500mL bleach) solution to soak up to 60 'new' bottles for a week. Can be reused 3 or 4 times no problem. Bottles are blasted with a hose & gun before and after then stored on the orange bottle trees. Expensive little buggers at $45 each but very good.

I keep a couple of spray bottles with straight bleach, one in the brewery (garage) and one under the kitchen sink. As bottles are emptied they get 3 hot water shakes, a few shots of bleach followed by a rinse with just a squirt of cold water and onto the tree.

On bottle and brew day I have one full and one empty bottle tree. I half fill a portable stainless laundry tub with water as hot as my hands can stand and about two cups of bleach. Drown 9 bottles at a time, scrub with bottle brush, empty, a dash of clean cold rinse then onto the clean bottle tree.

Work surfaces, utensils and can tops all get a bleach spray and rinse in the tub. The tub water is still there and warm to wash the fermenters, hose blasted before and after.

With my hands in and out of the tub of bleach water washing and rinsing throughout I reckon this is a very clean process. And after all we fill the fermenter with tap water don't we?

Clean works for me. Sterile is for surgeons

Cheers, Geoff.

[Northwest9]

thanks for that geoff

i was about to head off to my HB shop for some sanitiser, but i think you make a good point about not doing heart surgery...

ive gotta get a bottle tree, but im stunned at how expensive the buggers are

[Renegade]

Anyone have a good homemade no-rinse sanitiser recipe that they standby? I have read something about a weak vinegar & bleach solution.

[Kevnlis]

Just make sure you do not mix the bleach and vinegar... you need to add them to a volume of water.

[geoffclifton]

No rinse implies, and should be, zero residue and inactive at bottling. Metho for example is supposed to be a no residue substance though I'm not suggesting it as a sanitiser. Would you spray a squirt of cleaner in your beer? Washing in bleach water followed by a shot of clean water works for me.

Cheers, Geoff.