Cleaning & Sanitising.

Cleaning Your Equipment

All brewing equipment needs to be properly cleaned before you use it, each and every time. As our equipment is specific to brewing we will recommend you use a cleaner that is also specific for that purpose. This means no household cleaners, detergents or bleaches of any kind should go near our fermenters, kegs or our bottles.

Dish detergents will never wash away properly and your yeast will not like the sudsy residue, which will also destroy the head retention ability of your beers. While using a strong solution of a household bleach like ‘Janola’ will kill bacteria it can actually still leave grime on the surface, basically making it invisible, by bleaching out the colour of the dirt. This is like when you throw a dose of chlorine into a swimming pool, it kills the algae and the water looks blue and clean but the sides of the pool are slimy to touch. It is also really difficult to neutralise after use. So what should you use? We have several excellent brewers cleaners available: Mangrove Jacks Cold Water Cleaner, Brigalow Bottle Washing Powder (TSP) and PBW.

These cleaners will keep all your brewing equipment clean, are safe to handle and are cost effective. They are safe to use on all equipment whether it is plastic, glass, stainless steel or rubber. Combine your cleaner with a gentle brushing action with a bottle brush to get into the ‘pores’ that exist in a surface, especially on plastic, and remove the build up of grime from use. Bacteria need a place to breed. Any residue from your brew but particularly any yeast left will give bacteria a perfect breeding ground. By using a cleaning solution inside your fermenters and bottles you should be able to lift all dirt away from all the little nooks and crannies. Cleaners can be used in cold water but nice hot tap water (approximately 55C) will help to kill off the nasty “bugs” that will try to breed in your equipment.

Now we don't wish to alarm you by telling you this, but all brews will have some level of bacteria in them. This includes all of my brew’s, yours and all commercially fermented products too, actually all food products do. By using a good solution of (hot) cleaner on every surface to remove residue and kill bacteria we aim to keep it under control so we will not taste, smell or see their effects. These bugs simply harm the brew by the way, they are not the sort of bugs to do you any mischief or make you sick. Each person has their own tolerance or “threshold” level to a bug, one person may pick up a bad taste for instance where another person finds no fault. There is many varieties of bacteria, mould, fungi and wild yeast that are available in the our environment and they would love to have a party in your brew. The cleaner will usually take care of these bugs, often for many years. It should also remove any odour from the previous batch and in doing so will stop cross contamination (taste and smell) so that one fermenter can be multipurpose in its use. As it removes build up on surfaces it will help to keep your plastic fermenters looking white and clean.

Any product has its limitations however and over many years of good use the ‘build up’ on a surface such as a fermenter becomes too great and the bacteria start to affect the quality (finished taste and smell) of beers, ciders and wine so the fermenter should be replaced. You may notice your fermenter is looking a lot more brown than white after a long time. We would recommend a well used fermenter should be replaced say every 5 years to avoid problems. Muntons (UK) actually recommend earlier at only 3 years!

The recommended dosage rate of many cleaners is one teaspoon (5 grams) of powder to every litre of (hot) water used. Always remove the worst of the previous brew’s residue i.e the yeast sediment and any yeast ring around the top, by rinsing under warm water first, before adding the (diluted) cleaner. For ‘lightweight’ cleaning on new, or near new fermenters, you’ll need to use only a few litres worth of solution to clean. Swirl the solution around until you are satisfied all surfaces including the tap spout, rubber o-ring (if applicable) and lid are clean. 

If the equipment is older, is left in a poor condition or is a long time between batches then a more heavy duty clean may be required. If you are unlucky and have an infected brew you will need to do extra cleaning too. Use as much solution as necessary, filling the entire barrel if required and soaking overnight. Or put say 5-10 Litres of solution in the fermenter and lie the fermenter on its side in the sink. Rotate the fermenter after a few minutes until all surfaces are well soaked. Make the solution as hot as the equipment can handle to kill the bugs but remember bottle brushes cant handle really hot water. If this treatment is neglected the next brew may be a disaster and need tipping out. Don’t forget to do the stirring spoon, brew bottler, airlock, o-ring, bungs etc, at the same time. Always put equipment away clean (and dry) if you don’t intend to do another batch for a while.

The easiest way I’ve found to clean beer or wine bottles is to stand them up in the sink and fill them with solution rather then trying to submerge them in a sink full of liquid. Use about 1/2 teaspoon of cleaner per 750ml bottle. Half fill them with nice hot tap water, cover the opening with your palm and shake well. Fill to brim with more hot water and let stand as long as you feel necessary. About 10 to 30 minutes later I shake the solution back out again. It is also good to get a bottlebrush into each bottle, this is more important if you don’t rinse the bottles clean when emptied originally or on glass beer bottles which for some reason build up a ‘film’ inside over time.

You should rinse all equipment over well with water, hot or cold is fine, to remove any traces of cleaner. While it is o.k to clean a small amount of time in advance it is preferable to clean immediately before the final sterilising and then use. Even if I store my equipment “clean” I always repeat the process before using to take care of any bacteria that may have colonised my equipment during that time. Remember that you are achieving two objectives when cleaning your equipment, washing grime away and preventing bacteria from using your equipment as a holiday resort.

Sanitising Your Equipment

We need to physically clean equipment before we can sanitise/sterilise it. Products that claim to be ‘sterilizer/cleaners’ generally don’t do a great job of either and by their nature require rinsing off at the end, whereas a true sterilizer does not require rinsing and should be the last thing to touch equipment before the brew does.

The traditional product to sterilize all your fermenters, accessories and bottles is Sodium Metabisulphite (or Sodium Met. for short). Sodium Met is often misunderstood even by the most experienced brewers. It is often referred to as a ‘cleaner’ for bottles for instance. Sodium Met solution is as efficient at cleaning equipment as simply swirling cold tap water. We need to clean properly with our cleaner first. Brewers also expect that Sodium Met will kill (100%) of bacteria on contact, it doesn’t, your cleaner needs to be able to do this. While Sodium Met solution will ‘inhibit’ bacteria by contact its primary function is to fill an environment, such as a fermenter or bottle, up with an inert gas (Sulphur Dioxide/SO2) and push all the oxy-gen that previously occupied that space out. When there is no oxygen (or air) present that is when it is sterilized. While we could use other gas types, CO2 or NO2 for instance, SO2 is cheap to produce and is favoured by commercial breweries and wineries for the same function. More popular these days is Mangrove Jacks No Rinse Sanitiser, we use it the same way as Sodium Met but it doesn't create a gas (smell). It is also safe for use on metal and rubber where Sodium Met isn't. Star San and StellaSan are also good sanitisers.

Common questions are “Will it kill the yeast” and “Won’t I taste it?” Quite literally the answer is no to both of these. It will not harm your yeast, which is also why it doesn’t kill bacteria, and we don’t need to rinse it out before using the equipment, the starting strength is really low and any remaining residue would be totally diluted away, with the addition of 23 litres of wine, wash or beer added on top of the few droplets left in. Commercial winemakers have understood the properties of sulphite and burnt sulphur sticks to produce SO2 gas for sterilising their equipment for centuries.

Using Sodium Metabisulphite or No Rinse Sanitiser; After the cleaner has been rinsed off the equipment it is ready to be sterilized. Add one teaspoon (5 grams) of sanitiser (powder) per litre of cold tap water used. The equipment does not need to be filled to the brim, in fact a few litres of solution is plenty to sterilize a normal size fermenter, Use 3-5 litres of clean, new solution. Never store and re-use solution, at the recommended strength you can actually breed bacteria and contaminate another brew if you do try to recycle it. Allow the solution to stand inside the fermenter for around 10-15 minutes, shaking it a few more times to keep the surfaces wet. Then run some out through the tap spout, rinse over your stirring spoon, thermometer, hydrometer etc. Drain the fermenter completely but DO NOT rinse. Sterilizing should only be done immediately before use as it dissipates and loses it strength soon afterwards.

To sterilize your bottles, mix up some solution and pour a little into each and every bottle. To sterilize 30 bottles requires about 3-5 litres again. Do not pour from bottle to bottle as you can cross contaminate with the sterilizing solution if a bug has been virulent enough to survive the cleaning step or you forgot to clean properly! Also put the solution into the bottles rather than the bottles in a solution in the sink. Its the inside of the bottles we are trying to santise, not the outside. Don’t forget to do your caps, bottle filling tube or hose at the same time. Drain the bottles, but do not rinse, and use immediately.

If using Sodium Met it is really important not to rinse out the solution, or gas, at the bottling stage for beer and wine, or when racking a finished wine into storage into your carboy or demijohn. If your brew goes into a gas environment it is “cushioned” and protected from air. Without the gas it will actually absorb air and can spoil from infection or oxidise. If you want to reduce the yeast sediment deposit in your beer bottles definitely do not rinse, sodium met used in conjunction with your bottle filler will be responsible for keeping your yeast sediment to a much smaller level in your beer and ciders.

If you are a distiller you do not need to use a sanitiser on your Spirit Still, Carbon Filter equipment or your spirit bottles. It is perfectly ok for you to use it on your wash fermentation equipment though. 

For mashing equipment like Grainfather G30's use Grainfather High Performance Cleaner. You do not need to use a sanitiser afterwards.