sterilizing corny keg

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Permalink Reply by Chris Mills on February 24, 2011 at 11:19am

Three weeks seems to be enough - as I am a fan of real ales I don't refrigerate them and simply keep them in nice cool corner under the house at around 15°C.

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Permalink Reply by Ian on February 24, 2011 at 12:45pm

I go quite a bit on my craft brewing mate's advice and he always insists that the best thing when connecting the keg to CO2 in the kegerator is to leave it be (barring inquisitive sips every week of course) for a full four weeks. This stretches delayed gratification pretty thin but I have tried abiding by that and my beer seems to definitely benefit by it when I tuck in.

  I have a keg in the fridge now and another standing beside the fridge. The second one I primed with a bit of raw sugar. I was advised that maybe this wasn't the best way and maybe just displacing any air with CO2 and leaving it until getting it into the fridge with CO2 hooked up is best? I'd be interested to know what you guys  feel. Also, whilst I know the carbonating with CO2 won't be effective until the keg is refridgerated, does it still condition significantly standing at room temperature?

Cheers,

Ian

Permalink Reply by Reviled on February 24, 2011 at 1:59pm

Ahh - english yeast - question answered ;o) lol - cheers Chris

Permalink Reply by Matt Smith on February 24, 2011 at 11:37am

When you use napisan, is that basically in place of something like PBW ?....I just ran out of PBW and was going to order more, but I'm thinking napisan is going to be way cheaper. What type of ratio do you use ?

Cheers !

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Permalink Reply by Matt Smith on February 24, 2011 at 11:39am

That reply was meant to be under Revileds post further up, not sure why it ended up down here

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Permalink Reply by Chris Mills on February 24, 2011 at 1:19pm

You might go in on a bag of sodium percarbonate (primary ingredient in Napisan) from Clark Products up in Napier (http://www.clarkproducts.co.nz/products/chemicals). It comes in a 25kg sack and lasts a long, long time - in fact if anyone wants a kilo of it I'd be happy sell a little if you are interested.

 

This raises the notion of mixing up a batch of home-brewed PBW by purchasing a 25kg bag of Sodium Metasilicate and 2 x 25kg of Sodium Percarbonate and hiring a small electric cement mixer it should be possible to mix up 75kg of PBW-analogue for a little under $5/kg as opposed to $36/kg of PBW in packaged form in NZ. I'd be very happy to go in for a third of the cost of this if anyone else is keen to get in on something like this too.

 

I am not a chemist, but my searching on the web has shown that PBW is 30% Sodium Metasilicate and the rest is mostly Sodium Percarbonate. Please feel free to check me on my notions of mixing raw ingredients to make something which ought to cost far less than PBW off the shelf.

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Permalink Reply by Reviled on February 24, 2011 at 2:02pm

Matt - Napisan is definately one of the cheaper products out there, and Chris is right that the active ingrediant is Sodium Percarbonate, but because of all the other crap in there you do need to rinse it off!! I dont use a specific ratio, just half a cap full, mix with water until its good and foamy, splash it around, let it sit, splash again and then rinse!!

 

PBW is fkn expensive mate, waste of money IMO unless you are trying to get rid of kettle stone...

 

Chris - Sodium Percarbonate - in its pure form I've read that this stuff breaks down into oxygen once it's done it's thing - so would this be suitable as a type of wash and sanitiser all in one? Or do you still need to rinse away the sodium percarbonate residue??

 

And wow, 25kg?? haha, that's like a lifetime of cleaning product!!

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Permalink Reply by Haish on February 24, 2011 at 2:22pm

Not quite, it breaks down to sodium carbonate and hydrogen peroxide (which breaks down to oxygen and water) so you will have the sodium carbonate left to rinse off. 25kg should last a little while...

 

There are other ingredients in PBW that allow it to remove beerstone and make it more effective, but the chemicals Chris mentions will make a pretty good cleaner. Just be careful using too much sodium met, I think its quite caustic.

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Permalink Reply by Rhyno on February 24, 2011 at 4:09pm

Please correct me if I am wrong (and I probabaly am) but what was the cleaning product that Albrecht mentioned not to use on Te Radar's program when Radar asked him what was the biggest mistake new hombrewer's could make. I know thats going back a year or two now.

From memory I thought it was Sodium Percarbonate.................

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Permalink Reply by Matt Smith on February 24, 2011 at 4:18pm

From memory I think it was sodium metibisulphite, used as a sanitizer which you have to rinse. I used to use it when I first started brewing with kits but switched to star san pretty quickly.

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Permalink Reply by Reviled on February 24, 2011 at 4:37pm

Yeah it was sodium metabisulphite - nasty stuff!!

 

From what i've read, It's not actually a sanitiser either, it prohibits growth but doesn't kill anything. On top of that, its horrendously bad for asthma and kills your lungs!!

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Permalink Reply by Chris Mills on February 24, 2011 at 4:49pm

I've only ever used it when making mead and even then you only drop one or two tablet in to a 20L batch and then leave it for several months. It's best for keeping unwanted things from growing in wine or mead while it's still fermenting. I also used to use it as a no-rinse sanitiser for wine bottles and corks as it was going to sit for at least 3 months before it had aged enough to drink it.

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