Homemade sanitizer

redser7

Wonder do you use anything instead of 'proper' sanitizer? Like bleach or a cheaper supermarket product?
I'm only starting out and keep coming up short on small items and dont want to pay a fiver for delivery for small things like this.
Thanks a lot!

Fart

I hear that mixing bleach, vinegar and water is good.

I might give it a try on my next brew when cleaning the fermenting vessel.

Khannie

I do the bleach, vinegar and water thing. Works a treat. 69c for 1.5L of thin bleach in Supervalu.

redser7

Brilliant, thanks both. How much of each would you use Khannie?
Lidl do 1 litre red malt vinegar for 30 odd cents I presume red is ok. It's 5% acidity.

engrish?

redser7 wrote: »

Brilliant, thanks both. How much of each would you use Khannie?
Lidl do 1 litre red malt vinegar for 30 odd cents I presume red is ok. It's 5% acidity.

I have images of myself standing over the fermenter shaking a bottle of vinegar counting the drops as they go in! Does the lidl one have a dropper in the neck?

Yawns

the bottle is just under 500mls in lidl for about 39cent. It works fine. Supervalu or Tesco for the thin bleach at 65cent.

It's mixed at a ratio of 30mls bleach, 20 liters water, 30 mls vinegar. Or you can add vinegar, water, bleach. DO NOT MIX THE BLEACH AND VINEGAR FIRST.

The vinegar bottle comes with a dropper. Jab a knife or something in it and pop it out. It's easy to pop out so don't try hard. Just stab and twist n pull. I use the trial jar and measure up to exact 30 mls of each. I use a spare fermenter with markings on the side to reach the 20L mark. Simple and easy with 0 probs. It's a NO RINSE sanitizer.

Khannie

Yawns wrote: »

DO NOT MIX THE BLEACH AND VINEGAR FIRST.

Just want to seriously +1 this. It releases chlorine gas which is toxic. Water, add bleach, stir, add vinegar.

Khannie

redser7 wrote: »

Lidl do 1 litre red malt vinegar for 30 odd cents I presume red is ok. It's 5% acidity.

It's what I use. You can smell the chlorine after mixing so I'm guessing it's fine / I've never had any trouble anyway.

Ratsathome

I use the vinegar solution as well.Just ordered starsan for my cornies.Will use the bleach still for other sterilization.
Thin bleach 30ml
White vinegar 30ml
Water 20l

BeerNut

And it's totally scalable too. On bottling day I fill an 80L tub with 60L of water, 90ml bleach and 90ml vinegar. If I'm just taking a reading: 10ml of bleach, 10ml of vinegar in 7L of water.

Remember it has to be THIN bleach. Thick and/or scented is no good to you.

redser7

Perfect, thanks so much for the important detail. My bad, thought it was a litre bottle.
Cheers

Carawaystick

If you live in a house which has Milton, you can use that if you've no thin bleach, double the measurements for the bleach.
It is considerable more expensive than bleach though.

The very handwavy explanation for adding vinegar is that it lowers the pH of the mixture and the buggies don't like acid, and die.

Lars

I've always used the bleach vinegar solution but recently moved to starsan because I can store it in a spray bottle indefinitely and it retains its ability to sanitize. Apprently the bleach vinegar mixture has a short shelf life.
The original Charlie Talley recipe was 5 gallons water /1 Oz Thin Bleach/1 Oz vinegar

Yawns

I think it's more a case that once a bottle of bleach is opened it has a relatively short date when compared to starsan. Bleach will become less effective over a period of a couple of months. Starsan I have not used but it is on a list of things to buy for future use. From what I can gather even when it's cloudy, it's still pretty effective at sanitizing.

The beautiful thing about the thin bleach and vinegar is that even when it doesn't last as long as starsan, it's so much cheaper that it doesn't really matter. 39c for vinegar and 65cent for thin bleach. I did notice the other night Tesco has increased the price of the thin bleach to 69cent. Supervalu was still 65cent tho.

Lars

Apparently the bleach vinegar mix doesn't last anywhere near months when made up. It's risky using it after a week or so

Yawns

ya but the advantage to the bleach and vinegar is that it is super cheap and you wouldn't need to store it for a few days let alone a few weeks or a week. It'll cost ya a little over a euro to buy the two bottles and you only 30 mls of each to 20L of water, so the bottles will last ya a long while. Due to bleach not having a long shelf life I generally use it for other household chores and it's generally gone in a short time. Likewise it gets bought for household chores so I always have a bottle of it handy. Same with vinegar, it's great for cleaning around the house so I always have a bottle handy.

fobster

It's only when water charges kick in that we'll change our ways!

Spike78

We are on well water at home which is very hard water can any of the science boffins please tell me should I up the quantity of vinegar to counteract the alkaline. I was going to use starsan but have read it is less effective in hardwater areas.

Thanks in advance.