Starsan question

I'm almost ready to bottle my Festival Golden Stag and will obviously need to sanitise the bottles and caps, but also the siphon, tube and Little Bottler.

As I understand it, within a minute or two of spraying Starsan onto a surface, it evaporates off, hence no rinsing.

I'll have to immerse the siphon and tubes and as the tube in particular is fairly long, air doesn't easily reach the inside. We all know when we wash or rinse a piece of tubing, water droplets can be seen inside the tube for many days.

So, it is safe to immerse siphons and tubes in Starsan and then have beer flowing through them a few minutes later, or am I better off using a standard sanitiser that has to be rinsed for these items?

Thanks for any help.

Yes it's fine.Put your starsan into your bottling bucket or basin and let them soak for a bit and you'll have no issues.

Sent from my ALE-L21

I spray some into the tube and then take both ends lifting them up and down to make sure all the innards have been wet, then throw it into the FV with about half a mugs worth extra, lid on, give it a good shake to wet everything then leave for 5 mins before draining. It doesn't evaporate off as such but you use your bucket/tube etc wet.

Just a few tips on plastic tubes:

1. After use and before putting them away, always give syphon tubes and bottling wands a rinse through with Star-San, shake out any excess liquid and leave them looped over a beam so that they can drain.

2. Longer tubes (even those in ordinary water service) will have to be coiled and they will grow black mould wherever they stay damp. To combat this, always use an unscented bleach as a last "rinse through" before leaving a coiled tube for a week or more. (Minor bits of black mould can be removed by soaking the tube in thin bleach for 24 hours and then rinsing it out with copious amounts of water.)

3. The tubes used for "blow-off" duty can get bits of debris inside them if the krausen decides to go walkabout. If any debris sticks to the side of the tube I find it a lot easier to just scrap the tube rather than trying to clean it.

4. The oxidation of copper inhibits the formation of any mould inside a copper tube (e.g. my syphon tube) but the oxidised copper itself needs removing so I always give it a quick blast of Star-San (an acid based sanitiser) and then rinse it out just before using it.

5. ALWAYS use clear plastic tubes so that you can see anything nasty inside them; and scrap them when it becomes impossible to see through to the inside.

6. Finally, you cannot sanitise muck, so make sure that everything you are trying to sanitise is free from dirt, debris, small insects, slugs, wood-lice etc (I have found ALL of these inside various bits of kit over the years ) before attempting to sanitise it.

Hope this helps! :thumb:

Starsan is great. It has made my bottling day so much easier and quicker.

I don't think you need to dry the starsan off, in fact I think there's meant to still be a liquid coating of starsan as you add your beer. All I do now is squirt starsan into my bottles using a bottle washer; just enough to coat the insides. Drain them on a bottle rack, and fill using a Little Bottler attached to my bottling barrel. I do 5 bottles at a time: sterilise, drain, and then fill. Any more and they start to dry out before I can fill them.

For syphoning I fill the syphon tube with water, then I start the flow off from a jug of starsan, so starsan flows through the tube and sterilises. Then I transfer to the beer. I'm not explaining this very well, but here is a link to a video that does a better job than I am doing:

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6wnVFsGdv0[/ame]

Are you planning to syphon into a bottling bucket, or direct from your FV to your bottles? I like to use a bottling bucket, I just think it makes things easier, only one thing to concentrate on at a time, and I can mix my priming sugar into the bottling bucket.

Anyway, best of luck, I'm sure it will go well.

Hi!
I bought a garden pressure spray to clean and sanitise my tubes (ooooh, matron!)

MagnusTS said:

Are you planning to syphon into a bottling bucket, or direct from your FV to your bottles? I like to use a bottling bucket, I just think it makes things easier, only one thing to concentrate on at a time, and I can mix my priming sugar into the bottling bucket.

Click to expand...

I'm going to transfer the beer to a pressure barrel from the FV to leave the sediment behind, then bottle from there using the Little Bottler. And yes, I'll put the priming sugar into the barrel, siphon the beer on top of that and then to bottles.

Thank you all for your help and suggestions - I feel much more comfortable about using StarSan now!