Starsan

[Bazza]

Hi all,

Finally moving into the 21st century and down the Starsan route to cut out all that rinsing time from my brewdays. Just wanted to know what do most of you dilute the stuff with? I've read that ordinary tap water renders it cloudy and less effective and that distilled water is best. Halfords only seem to do deionised water. I know that it's different from distilled water but would it do? Thinking now,  I've an endless source of it from our dehumidifier.  Or is there a cheap Tesco bottled water I could pick up?

Any tips or experiences welcomed.

Cheers,

-Barry

[Garry]

I use tap water and it works fine (our water is hard). It goes cloudy alright but I reckon its fine for a few weeks. I got some deionised water at the motor-factors for my spray bottle but that went cloudy too!

I like the dehumidifier idea. We have a condensing tumble dryer, I assume the water from this would be the same?

[Eoin]

The water in the driers tends to be contaminated with perfumes. The cloudiness is undesirable and charley Talley does talk of it normally being a problem. However as Tube says pH is the definitive factor once it's below three it's good. I find with my tap water that I can't get below 3.4 so I tend to use Halfords battery refill water.

Sent from my HTC One

[Bazza]

Cheers lads.

So here's my question, are you talking a pH of 3 BEFORE or AFTER adding the Starsan?

I tried some pH strips on our tap water last night. Was around 5-6.
Tried them on some water in the dehumidifier. Still 5-ish.

Had a go at distilling some water. After about an hour's boiling and attempted condensing I measured the tiny trickle of water gathered - again 5!

Dodgy pH strips?

Cheers,

-Barry

[Bazza]

pH strips are a bit vague.

Got those off the missus, who's a nurse by day. Thought vagueness was something you DIDN'T want in the medical profession 

Anyway, ordered a cheap pH meter off of Ebay. £5. From Hong Kong, however, so I hope not being from China doesn't make it any less shitty and hopeless. You worry.

-Barry

[brenmurph]

Starsan is an acid sanitiser, its all about PH regardless of cloudy or not.

I keep my Combat ( Irish Starsan replacement) PH at 2 same as stomach acid, not much lives in that!

[Bazza]

Okay, so all the science, pH and stuff aside. Here's a scenario:

I give my FV a good wash to make sure there's no traces of dirt in it. Then I pour in a litre or 2 of Starsan solution, swirl it around for a minute, pour it out again and then it's all fine for my precious wort to go in? THAT'S JUST F***ING CRAZY MAN!!!

You must understand, I've been using VWP for the last 5 years.

Also, the instructions say this stuff shouldn't come in contact with human skin or eyes YET WE'RE FINE TO DRINK TRACES OF IT?

-Barry

P.S. my project in work got canned late last week, leaving me with FAR too much time to think about stuff.

Ebay and Amazon have been taking a battering too.

[Bazza]

About 100ml will do. Swirl it around and around and then dump it or pour it back in your starsan repository.

AAAAAAAHHH! This is blowing my freakin' mind!

So you only have 1-200ml of solution made up at any one time?

Cheers,

-Barry

[brenmurph]

or use a spray bottle, which u should have anyway for general spraying.

As per instructions on starsan bottle the neat stuff is hazordous so dont spill on skin, splash on eyes or drink it :

[Will_D]

If you want a cheap source of de-ionised water go to your local petshop/aquarium.

Aquariums shops will have a reverse osmosis set up and should sell you 5 gallons of RO water for about a fiver. Well the do in Malahide!

So use RO water to dilute the starsan 1:500 as it says and get a 1 or 2 litre garden spray bottle from the DIY/Garden centre and you are set up!

[Bazza]

Cheers lads. This is all extremely helpful.

I didn't realise the amounts needed were so small so I've started distilling some water in the kitchen.

When the Startsan arrives later, I'll put some into the normal tap water, the distilled water and water from the de-humidifer and compare colours with the pH strips.

Ordered a set of 5 spay bottles day before yesterday so should be here soon.

This is a brave new world for one so advanced in his years. Was getting my hair cut this morning and the barber actually recommended me Brill Cream over any high and fancy styling gels   

-Barry

[Quiet_Man]

Hi Barry,

I make up 5L with cheap bottled water from Tesco, then put into a spray bottle (£1 from Wyse Byse) for general use, or into the bottle rinser. I still use W5 oxy and VWP for steeping fermentors.


Andy

[brenmurph]

As well as the spray bottle I have 5-gallon bucket and lid. Leave hoses, jugs, airlocks, bungs, siphon sticks, bottles and whatever. leave the lid on and  everything is ready to use anytime.
Spray bottle is filled from the bucket. Hard to make up 1 litre of starsan as its only a few mls to a gallon.

[Bazza]

Since my last post the Starsan arrived. As did my wife with a medical syringe.

So I took 3 glasses and into each I put in 100ml of tapwater, water collected from dehumidifier and distilled water respectively.

Into each glass I added 0.15ml of Starsan and shook (Syringe capacity is 1ml so pretty accurate).

Below are the results:



Far left is tap water with no Starsan and following on from left to right are Starsan solutions with tap water, de-ioninsed water and distilled water in that order.

As you can see from the pH strips they're all around 3 (compared to 5-6 of the untreated tap water), but notice how cloudy the Starsan/tap water combo is, compared to the others. The distilled solution looks to be more foamy though it could be due to shaking it more than the others (and spilling a little in the process). In contrast the tap water solution seems the least foamy though maybe my shaking technique was a little rusty earlier in the experiment.


So in conclusion the above test has just confirmed my earlier assertion that I am currently between projects in work.


Cheers,

-Barry

[DEMPSEY]

Very hard water can resist the ph being lowered.