Sanitising with Star San

I've always used household bleach for my sanitising rituals. This was partly due to it being cheap, partly because it's also a good cleaner, and partly because the only alternatives I'd seen readily available here in NZ were Sodium metabisulphate and sodium percarbonate. From research, these two alternatives are not actually classified as sanitisers (although that doesn't stop them being sold as such).

I actually use sodium percarbonate as my cleaner of choice. It's amazing at removing caked on gunk from the bottom of old bottles. I buy the Clorox Oxi Magic.

So the two sanitisers that seem to be recommended by those in the know are Star San and Iodophor. I was quietly stoked to see a bottle of Star San sitting on the shelf at Hauraki Homebrew last time I was in there.

I've just bottled two batches using Star San on the bottles. So time will tell how well it worked, but the main thing I loved about it was the time it saves me.

The main problem with bleach is that you need to soak the bottles in it for at least 30 mins, AND you need to rinse them off with boiled water. This makes bottling day quite an operation.

Previously, I'd have all my bottles soaking in a massive plastic bucket filled with around 40-50 litres of water and bleach (4ml per litre). I'd then have plenty of pre-boiled water ready for rinsing. Each bottle would then be emptied of bleach, rinsed thoroughly with the boiled water, then filled with beer.

The key advantages of Star San are this:
- Short contact time needed (1 minute is plenty)
- No rinsing required

With Star San, I simply lined my clean bottles up on the counter and filled a small rectangle bucket with 2 litres of water and 3.2ml of Star San.

I then dipped the bottles in the bucket (2 or 3 at a time), rolled them around and drained them, ready to be filled with beer. I found it ore efficient to do all the bottles first, then do all the bottling, but there's no reason you could sanitise, drain and fill each bottle one at a time.

The time saving and reduced preparation is phenomenal, and it doesn't matter if there are a few drops of Star San solution in your bottles. It apparently won't affect the taste of your beer at all. In fact Star San breaks down into nutrient for the yeast! How cool is that?

One thing you'll notice with Star San is that it tends to create a lot of foam. This foam can be difficult to get out of your bottles. But don't be tempted to rinse it out. You can just bottle on top of the foam. It won't affect the beer if there's a little foam in there.  At least this is what I've been advised by everything I've read.