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[Music] welcome to basic Brewing radio for Thursday March 29th 2007 I'm James Spencer here at basic Brewing radio we're all about home brewing with this
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week part two of our minseries on sanitization Charlie Tally from five-star chemicals joins us to talk about his product star sand but much to my surprise Charlie spent the first half of the interview talking about the proper use of household bleach for home
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brewing sanitization if you're new to home brewing or would like to get into the hobby check out our website basic brewing.com where you can find archives of our audio and video podcasts and our DVDs to walk you through the basic and more advanced Brewing techniques now
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before I get into the meat of the show I want to take a moment to tell you about a new home brew shop at least new to us that's selling our DVDs I I usually don't do this because I don't want to be seen as playing favorites among our our friends at The Homebrew shops however this is our first Homebrew shop in the
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UK James from beer.co contacted me uh wanting to become a vendor and if you go to his site and look for the uh books DVDs and magazines link on the left navigation bar you can find our videos I mention
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this because James might be able to ship uh the DVDs cheap uh to UK and EU customers um certainly than than I can so uh if you're in the UK or the EU
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beer.co you can also go to basic brewing.com and click on the where to buy link uh to find a link to beer.co and all of the wonderful uh American Homebrew shops who also sell our DVDs and we're very grateful to all
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of our domestic vendors who are helping to keep this little home ruing podcast afloat as well as all of you out there of course uh I've gotten a bunch of positive response about our conversation last week with Merl landman of national
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chemicals on Iota for many of you were grateful for the useful information that mer passed on and some had additional questions so I thought I would share some of those with you you and some of the answers as well of course be kind of silly just have the questions wouldn't
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it uh some asked about the proper way to measure Iota 4 and here's what Merl said he said there are a few methods to measure this and I will let you determine what will work best for you first we should look at the conversion since small volumes are often measured
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in milliliters or 1 1,000th of a liter uh 1/10th of an ounce equals 2.95 s milliliters and Merl says for your purposes you can round up and assume three 3 ml next I will outline a number
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of measuring strategies and you can choose a method that works for you number one Apothecary cup Merl says visit your local pharmacy they should have a small medicine cup that has 1/10th of an ounce or 3 ml
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gradations number two The Dropper method based on the viscosity properties of Iota for you can assume 20 drops per milliliter this would require 60 drops per gallon number three graduated
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cylinder this is a basic laboratory tool that you may be able to purchase through your local high school or college chemistry department number four use 2 and A2 gallons of solution 5 gallons of 12.5
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parts per million solution is often more than what a typical home Brewer may need for one sanitation event Merl says I suggest using 2 and2 gallons with 1/4 oun concentrate and mixing it in a 5 gallon
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pale so 1/ qu4 oun to 2 and2 gallons Merl says you can use a measuring cup and funnel to then disperse a volume of sanitizer into your Brewing vessel using the swirl technique to cover all surfaces now some of you asked about how long to store Iota 4 solution Merl says
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the quick answer it is not suggested to store diluted Iota 4 solutions for long longer than 8 to 24 hours and here's the explanation concentrated Iota 4 is very stable and when stored in the right conditions limited heat sun and UV
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exposure it can remain within specifications for more than 20 years Merl says I've actually tested two lots of 20-year-old ideally stored BTF Iota 4 packaged in 4 ooun containers and 100% of the samples passed specs however once
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you dilute the Iota 4 the lifespan is reduced to less than 60 hours in ideal water conditions and less than 24 hours in typical water conditions some aggressive water conditions high pH excessive iron calcium or biological
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load will reduce that time to 8 hours or less part of this deals with the low concentration of iodine required for sanitizing levels hence economy on one side low concentration is less economical on another another short
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lifespan however on further analysis the short lifespan in low concentration is a benefit when dealing with Brewing environments so that the limited remnants that may remain in the Brewing vessel have a negligible short and long-term impact on the
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product Chuck who uh is from Earth andwood Studio not sure where Chuck is but uh he does some amazing uh artwork at Earth andwood Studio has this question my question is somewhat environmental what are the effects if
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any Iota 4 and other sanitizers might have to a households pipes and further uh further on into reprocessing and perhaps the local water table murl says first I'd like you to know that all
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our products are biodegradable and nitrate free we do use sulfites and some of the detergent and cleaners but not as primary ingredients and only when there are no other reasonable options Merl says surprisingly enough one of the primary sources for sulfite introduction
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into the public water supply comes from shampoo well you know that's less of a concern with me nowadays uh with regards to home plumbing Merl says you should have no concerns as long as you flush with a moderate amount of water chlorine and
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strong acids are corrosive for to Metals particularly cast iron but at the concentration levels you would typically be working with there's nothing to be concerned about so there you go uh some of you asked about temperature and Iota
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4 Merl says heat and hot water is very useful during the detergency phase of cleaning your first step however cool water should always be used with Iota for iodine is considerably more
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sensitive to heat than chlorine so using cool or cold water is is really important and that that was news to me I'd always used hot water and sanitizing with Iota for because it just seems like hot water would do a better job there
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you go another thing I learned from our chats with uh our experts here on basic Brewing radio Kim from Calgary Alberta Canada called into question Merl's assertions about home canners and sterilization and here's what Merl had
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to say on review of the podcast I did make a mistake on my number numers for some reason or another I was thinking about reactor vessels and not autoclaves Kim is correct 15 psi is all that is needed and canners will sterilize so
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there you go Merl stands corrected but he does go on to say that you basically have to fit what you need to sterilize into the caner and using the steam itself produced with a caner uh outside of the caner you know just spraying Steam on stuff is is not a practical way
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to sanitize or certainly to sterilize so a lot of great information there and I appreciate Merl's quick responses to all your questions it's um an excellent excellent service and um really pleased with all the information that we got out
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with that um episode now let's go on to uh the second part in our sanitization series uh our interview with Charlie Tally from Five Star chemicals I asked Charlie to come on the show to get information about starand
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since he did invent the product however when I got him on the line he spent a lot of time talking about how to use household bleach properly as a home brewing sanitizer now as you as you probably know bleach has been maligned by many people in the home brewing hobby
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so it's kind of a shock to hear Charlie inventor of starand talking about how effective it can be if it if it's used properly of course he also spent a good bit of time talking about star sand as
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well of course now here's a warning listen carefully to Charlie's instruction on using household bleach at one point he talks about using vinegar with bleach in a water solution now you
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don't want to mix bleach and vinegar directly do not mix bleach and vinegar directly follow Charlie's directions and if you have any doubt as to how to do it
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properly don't buy a bottle of star sand or Iota 4 and use that instead fair warning I don't want to I don't want anybody to hurt themselves doing something they think they heard on the show so pay very close
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attention okay with that said now that you're all scared I just want to dot my eyes and cross my teas and make sure everybody understands okay let's get on to our interview with Charlie tally of
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five-star chemicals well Charlie tally welcome to basic Brewing radio glad to be here now you are the the founder of five star chemicals that's that's correct and uh give before we get started give us a little background on yourself and of
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festar well myself i' I've been in the chemical specialty business ever since uh 1968 and in that time I uh I developed a number of materials more or less hand sanitizers uh I developed the star sand
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type product in actually in 1971 so it's been around for quite some time uh and I introduced it actually into the home brewing Market somewhere in the uh oh 1991 92 and I did that only
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because a few few of my friends that are home Brewers asked me for a sanitizer and I said this is probably one of the better ones that you could use um where my background comes from is that uh I was a chemist for pen Walt chemical and Pen Walt chemical uh was a
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manufacturer of bleach Chlor Alkali products we would take salt and turn it uh change it from uh regular old table salt into uh sodium hydroxide which is drain opener into uh chlorine gas in the
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hydrogen gas make hydrochloric acid from it and bubble the chlorine gas back into the uh costic soda make bleach and most of the bleach that we sold was with uh Purex and being around for as long as I have
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been I knew EPA ever since uh matter of fact before they were born so uh I I I have a lot of stories about them but that's that's probably for another time
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um we're going to talk I guess basically about General sanitation and general sanitation is kind of an interesting thing because uh well chlorine is the granddaddy of them all and it's been around uh it's the beginning matter of fact EPA runs all of
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their tests based on what chlorine does and chlorine and when I say chlorine I'm actually talking about bleach um it doesn't really kill until you get your pH down to around four well I mean not four but eight and when you get down
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there at that eight level the best way to do it is to add vinegar to it um but at the same time if you add too much you guess and that's probably one of the reasons why a lot of it's not really well uh publicized uh they're
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afraid that uh uh overzealous uh users will uh somehow wind up and uh gas themselves I've never really found that to be the case because most people can uh can measure pretty close but uh it is one of
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those things so you you have the uh the Double of experience of of using uh or knowing how to use chlorine bleach properly and Manufacturing a product that uh that does it uh I would assume more more easily yes yeah we can um
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actually there's uh there's so many things that have changed over the uh over the years in the in the business and one of the things that has changed is is that it's uh uh well it's like anything else it's it's it's more production than it is anything else and
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uh it's easier to to pump stuff out and not worry about it than to U actually take the time and uh and formulate stuff the uh the correct way um when it comes to chlorine for example
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uh it's very simple to not put as much sodium hydroxide in there now what they do uh your average bleach that you buy off the shelf right now has uh 3/4 of a percent of free CTIC soda in it and they
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put that in there specifically it's easier than trying to uh eliminate all the iron that degrades bleach and try to eliminate a lot of the uh the hard minerals uh that you you you'll pick up either from splitting the salt or from
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just the makeup water itself and when they do that and that extra sodium hydroxide that's in there that gets in the way of killing it doesn't allow the bleach to produce a very specific killer it's called hypochloric acid this isn't a chemistry lesson and there is no test
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afterwards good but uh essentially if you don't produce this this particular compound hypoc chloris acid uh you'll see it bleach the uh like say uh everybody has bathroom mold everybody goes up they get a they get a little bit
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of bleach they throw it on the mold it turns white they think they killed it and then then uh next week it's back growing again and they're going well what did I do wrong you didn't do anything wrong you just never killed it all you did was to change its color and uh that's the thing that everybody has hangs their hat on TX
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hangs their hat on it all these other commercial brand names hang their hat on it and it's uh it's just what everybody uh is is brought up to understand or or think of they think bleach is the killer even EPA thinks bleach is a killer and
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even EPA doesn't tell people that they have to change the pH for it to be a killer so how can you tell if you've got good bleach or or bleach that's been adulterated uh the best way to tell is is by the color itself uh a good bleach
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will have a nice clear um yellowish green color to it bleach that is uh going south on you will have a cloud in it that's the first that's the first indicator the second
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indicator is is that you're not going to pick up any real odor it's uh good bleach will always have a slight chlorine odor to it and that slight chlorine odor isn't really chlorine it's hypochlorous acid um and that's like I said that's that's your real killer and what all
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these store brands are doing is is that they they think it it only goes into a watching machine they're they're only interested in uh making sure that everybody's underwear looks super white which is important wa it's a it's a good thing you know but especially if you're
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in an accident any mother will tell you yeah it is a good thing but it's it's something that uh uh when it comes to home brewing and when you see these home brewing books and stuff like that there should be an article specifically on it there should
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be a page specifically on it because it's an easy sanitizer to pick up it's it's easy to have everybody has it everybody has some some of it in their house would a good rule of thumb to follow be the cheaper the better as far
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as bleach is concerned in that way yeah storebrand store brand bleaches uh will traditionally have less sodium hydroxide in them and the reason being is that uh the chloride Proxes of the world uh want to sell their product they'll make it
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for everybody else but they want to sell their product before they sell anybody else's and uh the best way to do it is is not quite put all the all the CTIC that they do in it and then they it degrades faster on the Shelf grades
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faster on the Shelf it doesn't WIP the clothes it doesn't WIP the clo white whitening the clothes uh drops off faster and so they go back to the the national brand it's all marketing it's all marketing so if you if you're buying
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bleach buy the cheapest that you can buy and buy probably a smaller bottle because if you buy a big jug of the stuff it's going to hang around yeah yeah it's like buying aspirin you don't buy the hugest bottle of aspirin that you can find because it goes bad in this
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in this case smaller is better cheaper is better so uh now that we've got our our cheap bleach what's the proper way to use it when you all your bleach is going to be at 5% um and it's actually at
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5.25% and the reason being is that there is a little bit of degradation it starts to degrade as soon as it comes out of the tank uh it's not my fault it's just the way it is and when it happens that way uh your 5% is at a is at uh 50,000
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parts per million so at 50,000 parts parts per million you're going to have uh let me see I can do this I used to do it real well um I have a calculator here that's what I'm that's I'm as I'm I'm
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cheating but normally 1 oun in 5 gallons of water uh yeah will produce about 80 parts per million of chlorine 80 parts per million of chlorine is all you need to do do proper sanitation provided
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you also follow that with 1 o of vinegar white vinegar preferably So when you say follow what do you mean in other words you take your 5 gallons of water you add 1 oce of bleach and then you add 1 oce of vinegar never ever add the vinegar to
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the bleach and then add it to the water you can but you'll remember why I said never ever do it because of the gas because of the gas it'll come up and kiss you in the face right away M jump down on the floor and tell you I'm not going to be there anymore that's not
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good yeah and that that would be enough for me to you know kind of shy away from the whole thing well and that's one of the reasons why it's not really well well mentioned but uh I uh to do a to do a service and and to
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all the home Brewers that are out there listening to you um it's why sometimes home Brewers have a great great success with bleach that's why some home Brewers don't have a great success with bleach and the ones that have great successful bleach isn't because that they're actually adding vinegar to it it's
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because they scrub better they're actually cleaning better and they're sanitizing quite frankly uh a clean vessel an absolutely 100% clean vessel and that's that quite frankly is one of the main keys in in this whole in this whole wonderful world of mysticism so if
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someone cleans well enough in theory then uh you wouldn't have to sanitize it's recommended but it's not necessary yet absolutely and if you're going to all the trouble of Brewing you might as well go to all the steps that you that you can yeah it it it makes sense it's
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an insurance policy is what it is you're you're taking out a little bit of insurance on how well you cleaned so just to kind of tidy up our conversation on bleach uh how long would you soak and then at that concentration of 1 ounce
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per five gallons and then the 1 oce of vinegar after uh rinse is it required when at that level rinsing is not required okay and there's a lot of there's a lot of other uh oh Scare Tactics out there about uh producing
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chloroamines and doing this and doing that and all the other wonderful things that are out there um you don't have to rinse when you're at 80 parts per million you're not it's it's virtually impossible to even taste it at that level you can rinse if you want but if
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you rinse make sure that your water is sterile because if you're rinsing water that comes out of the tap water uh your portable water has has microorganisms in it and that's one of the reasons of of always using a no rinse sanitizer m is specifically for that reason you can't
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really trust the water that comes out of the tap right um so all that being said uh just a little as sight every major Brewery in the United States uh when it goes through the twist rinser where they rinse out their bottles before they fill
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them uh they seize a five part per million solution of sodium hypochlorite bleach H at a pH of five because they're maximizing the sodium hypochloride that's in the water or it's it's in the
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product itself so how much how much contact time uh would you have to have with the Bleach solution to you need 30 seconds huh I've always had I've always heard uh a long a much longer time with the Bleach yeah a lot of well if you get the pH right that's all you need if
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you're if you're high in in tocity it doesn't matter how long you have how long you have it [Laughter] contact it's it's kind of like real estate it's location location and location so let's let's step back and uh
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talk in generality I mean we've already covered one product uh but let's let's step back and talk in generality about about your philosophy of sanitization sanitization is is should be always your last step whatever you're doing and
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actually it should be actually your first step uh a lot of people um will clean and then they'll go out and they'll sanitize and they'll leave their equipment laying around and then they'll come back and they go oh I sanitize that and then they start to brew um and
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that's not correct the the best way to always have a clean a clean vessel a sanitary situation is to clean first make sure it's clean and then just before you're ready to brew sanitize the
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reason being is is that you have no idea how long or where the dust the air air uh air as it blows through the buildings or whatnot like that bacteria will will uh come in and all of a sudden you're
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infected uh just because the air blew mhm M and if you uh do a uh a good job of cleaning you don't have to worry about sanitizing right away all you're got to do is is just leave it around then when you're ready to brew sanitize
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that way you're you've got you're bringing the uh all of your um forces to bear so to speak at the at that initial point in time and you're not going to have any you're not going to have any infections MH a lot of guys will clean
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sanitize close it up and say well I I sanitized this thing last year so it should be fine no it's [Laughter] not so instead of wasting time and energy do it once but do it at the right time now I've heard of uh of people
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baking their bottles and uh then putting uh tin foil or aluminum foil sure over the uh the tops and then putting them in the basement or whatever and and then feeling secure that those bottles are still sanitized I used to do dry air
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sterilization when I was in the lab and you can do that and you can get a reasonable period of time of stability um and what I mean by you can do that in a reasonable period of time
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um the standard microbiological uh method is to heat the oven to 350° F put whatever glasswar you're going to sterilize in there bake it or keep it in there for 3 and 1/2
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hours I'll let it cool inside the oven and then bring it out when you do that um you'll get the uh you get the maximum steril sterilization of the bottles now depending on how the aluminum foil is
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attached to the necks of the bottle will determine how long the bottle will stay sterile I never kept my glasswar uh after using heat heat sterilization for more than a month uh after that uh I
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don't know it was either uh I didn't I didn't close them correctly I don't know what happened but uh maybe the tin foil starts to give away I don't know but it uh I would run into periodic infections so I only I would only do it for um
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roughly 30 days and then uh I would I would reheat them so that's reheating them doesn't hurt you either uhhuh um but that the key is the that time 3 and 1 half hours and that temperature
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350° they're the two keys and and heating up the bottles you don't have to worry so much about the the breaking or well you you put them in and you never put them in the oven at 350° you put them in and then let let the oven come up okay and it doesn't break and I used
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to uh I would sterilize uh beaker I sterilized uh glass pipets they look like little glass straws I sterilized uh oh uh all sorts of types of glassware and I never had any breakage as long as
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I followed that procedure now are we ready to move on into a star sand the reason for Star sand quite frankly uh I developed that as a direct response when Iota Force came on the market and I developed it because the
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Iota fores were a uh a fantastic replacement for bleach on in farm use in dairy farms and what we wanted to do was is we wanted to come up with something a little bit better something a little bit uh something that had a little bit of
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pzaz I guess it's the best way to put it and what we came up with uh with star sand is uh chemically it's referred to as an acid anionic detergent or sanitizer the acid an I iic is a
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synergistic killing machine in other words the acid by itself will not kill bacteria uh the anionic detergent by itself will not kill bacteria the combination of the two in the correct
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ratio is an absolute Stone killer it uh kills in the presence of organic material and it kills uh the entire range of organisms gram negatives gram positives yeasts molds uh and spores it's a sporicidal as
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well um so it was kind of a neat product its drawback was is that as anybody that's out there that uses it it Foams yeah uh but one of the things that I in why I introduced it into the home brewing Market was because of the
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foaming action because I know a lot of Home Brewers are out there they they brew or they uh uh they use as brights or serving tanks they're uh these Cornelius kegs and or these reconverted uh soft drink units and it's very difficult to like I
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was saying the scrubbing portion is to scrub up in the tops of the uh of the units of the kegs and get the uh the crois that may develop up there out of the keg and the because the foaming action
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will hit the top of the keg and also because it kills in the presence of of organic material if the cleaning isn't absolutely 100% correct you're going to get a high level of Sanitation and that's the and that's the
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key or that's the that's the real mechanism of why the star s works and why so many people are raving about it is because it it gives you that little extra step if I didn't quite get everything out of there that I wanted to so it's part part detergent so it cleans
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as well as sanitizes absolutely Ely that's why it's referred to as a detergent sanitizer now you you mentioned the uh the four-letter word that starts with f and uh on most postings uh that I've seen with questions about star sand it has to deal with foam and a lot of people are scared
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of it and a lot of people say I don't want you know I've got a whole bunch of foam in my car boy uh I don't want that in my beer absolutely and it it's it's a concern because a lot of things that are out there and uh that make foam aren't
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really the greatest things in the world to be putting in your body um besides beer besides beer so uh when I when I developed this material uh one of the things because I had mentioned like I mentioned before uh we developed it originally for the farm for the dairy
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farm for uh sanitizing milk trucks essentially um we made a conscious effort to find materials uh that were um on the grass list generally recognized as safe and we even went a step further
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and found out that everything that we were using or we could use for this product um is food great so the phosphoric acid that we use is the same phosphoric acid that you find in soft drinks if everybody turns around and looks at a uh oh a Coke can or a Pepsi
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can and reads the ingredients uh they're going to see phosphoric acid on the label and that phosphoric acid is the same phosphoric acid that's in start um the other the ddbsa which sounds extremely nasty um it stands for docco
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Benzene sulfonic acid or linear sulfonic acid uh and linear sulfonic acid is the acid version of the bubbles in toothpaste so you have and the third ingredient that's in this product is
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propylene glycol and propylene glycol is used uh universally uh in candy making and in food applications as a what they refer to as a humon it makes things uh moiser softer um so all the ingredients that
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are in in Star sand uh people have ingested and ingest every day although you wouldn't you wouldn't uh you wouldn't uh Advocate eating it right right out of the container no no it's not a it's not a recommended thing uh only because the concentration of the
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phosphoric acid that in there uh will um it will uh it will remove uh materials like for Mica things like that but when you're at 1 ounz and a gallon of water um you can ingest it I
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have Dr I have actually I have literally drank it in front of people just to show them that you can do that does it have any U medicinal properties uh well I haven't had a cold in a very long time but
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and I don't want I don't want folks to go out there and gargle with this stuff but at the same time uh I have had a lot of Home Brewers call me up and ask me uh very interesting questions as far as well how do I dispose of it it's a sanitizer you know and I'm I have a uh
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um I I'm one uh a septic septic tanks and I go hey great throw it in there and they go what are you talking about well the interesting thing about the products even though I said it a stone killer and it is uh once it's diluted out and once
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the pH goes above uh 3 and 1/2 it stops killing all of its all of its germicidal properties are gone once they're gone it becomes bacterial food it actually it actually helps septic tanks H so it's
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it's kind of an interest it's kind of an interesting little uh thing um it kills at it kills at one pH at another pH it becomes fod so it's the pH level that does the trick it's the pH that does the trick and I've also had uh home Brewers that have taken it out and thrown it on
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their roses and say that the Roses haven't looked as good in in five or six years which may be a good way to get the wife involved in the home brewing hobby at least at least endorsing it or tolerating it it's good for your plants it's good it's good for your cornies
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what what a world what a country it's so so what do you say and so you're you're you're saying is Don't Fear the foam basically yeah don't fear the foam and actually because because of the infinite dilution and because it actually does become a food uh for the
35:39
Brewers that are actually uh pitching yeast in the corns and using it at their primary fermentor uh the material will actually kick off and give them a robust fermentation so you would think that a sanitizer if there was if there was a
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residue of sanitizer in your carboy and you uh you you pitched your your ward in there you pitched your yeast uh any residue would have a detrimental effect on the on the fermentation absolutely but it doesn't no it doesn't so how long
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how long does star sand stay good because I've heard of people keeping a 5G car boy of star sand around and and reusing uh the solution that's yeah now I if I if I put my EPA hat on EPA says that you have to make a
36:28
fresh sanitizing solution uh every time you sanitize and that's that's a one siiz fits all and that's that's the caveat that I have to say however uh if I go the other way uh the
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material is kind of interesting like I mentioned before it is a uh it is a soap it's an acid anotic detergent um if it's made with the ionized water if the use solution is made with the ionized water and there
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are no minerals in the water itself um uh the use solution is active for literally months H uh if there's minerals in the water what will happen over a period of time the minerals will
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start to win out and they'll start to create a hardw soap the hard waterer soap will make the product go cloudy uh only because just like uh when people U use bar soap and they get uh soap tub
37:30
Rings it works it works identically they're there there's no difference in the in the chemical reactions behind it and any Brewer that uses the product that's in a hard water situation I always tell them to go to the the supermarket and buy a jug of deionized
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water off the shelf um they'll thank me for it later on and they do they they call me back up and they say boy the water you know the sanitizing solution it's Crystal Clear some of them actually have PH meters um some home rers and uh
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they go my pH is uh it remains at three um for two or three months I said yeah you're still sanitizing you're still killing so it's if that's how you test the effectiveness you can assest the effectiveness by two ways either by a by pH now I know that a lot of folks don't
38:20
have a pH meter um and or by the by the turbidity of the uh actual use solution how cloudy it is so theoretically if your if your equipment is clean uh when you sanitize you shouldn't
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worry about getting uh debris from uh tro or something like that in your sanitizer anytime you get that kind of stuff you know it it's a good practice to dump it yeah and it and it means that you're not doing a good enough job uh probably in the in the cleaning uh
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section of the of the process right how much sanitation is always 90% cleaning how much contact time do you have to have with staran star sand kills in 30 seconds I have on the label 2 minutes only because the EPA uh test is always
39:13
for 2 minutes and you're required to put on the label what the EPA test is that's a that's another one of those government things but two minutes is not going to not going to kill you it's not it'll no won't won't hurt you and all all it is
39:31
again like I said all all all sterilization is is an insurance policy you're taking out an insurance policy on exactly how you cleaned so so star s is is good for the Roses it
39:49
work that that's not on the label probably no no I I'm not allowed to put that on the label either it it's around if you if you have deionized water and you don't have minerals in the water uh you can use it for an indefinite period as long as the
40:05
pH stays around three right and uh if it Foams that's a good thing uh and don't worry about uh about the residue because I've I've actually heard from a couple of people who say they they like Star sand but then they have to rinse to get the foam out
40:20
afterwards you know and it it it it's a personal preference quite frankly you know I mean uh you don't have to if you want to fine you know um it it doesn't hurt my feelings one way or the other you know uh and I can I can
40:37
certainly understand it because uh a lot of the stuff a lot of the stuff that I do is scary yeah you say you say chemicals and yeah the average person when you hear these things you know it's it's not like well I'm hey oh it's a chemical it's got
40:52
to be good for you you know it's it's it's not the way the it's not the way the world works anymore even though water is a chemical and we seem to like that pretty well yeah even though just about everything that we do is a chemical one way or the other um but like I like I said that that's a story for another
41:08
[Laughter] day what else on on sanitization I mean are there any things uh this is the the question that I that I always try to ask at the end of the interview to make sure that I'm not completely clueless but what else about sanitization uh have we
41:25
not talked about that you think is ESS well like I said before and and cleaning without without a doubt is the best thing that anybody can do um give you an idea or what I mean by
41:40
cleaning is the best thing that anybody can do uh a lot of I do I do an awful lot of work with The Rock Bottom group uh Rock Bottom Brewers which is a national uh Brewing chain uh across the country and they have uh Brewers that
41:56
come in they leave they go they do something else like like any other job and Rock Bottom doesn't look for a brewer when they hire they look for somebody and they say are you afraid of
42:12
cleaning and a lot of them will look at them and they say well no I'm here to interview for a brewing job they go no no no no no Brewing is cleaning if you're not afraid of cleaning we will teach you how to brew that's the easy part the hard part is to
42:27
teach you guys how to clean and yeah that that's funny people people ask me about home brewing and I say well if you like washing dishes you'll love home brewing and that's and that's that quite frankly is the key I mean uh
42:42
there's a lot of folks that are out there that say you know uh if you use the sanitizer sanitizer are fine you use the right sanitizer and and don't worry about it and go and you know go forth and multiply that's why a lot of folks get turned off about home BR uh they they run into so many uh uh
43:00
bad experiences about taking all the time to to mash in and to wait the anticipation of of the first Brew to come off and then uh their taste in lactobacillus that that's you know I mean it's okay if you want a Lambic or
43:16
something like that that's great right you know most people aren't looking for that and uh it all comes down to the fact that they didn't scrub they didn't clean it's it's kind kind of a it's kind of an interesting little situation when you talk about sanitation but I'm I'm I
43:32
really talk about cleaning well this has been fun anytime and I uh just so that everybody knows I do have uh they can't ask me direct questions I have uh on fivestar chemical.com there's a there's a little
43:50
section says ask Charlie and if anybody has specific questions or whatnot like that they can just email me and uh I don't care what the question is I'll give them I'll give them the straight stuff yeah I can say that I I forwarded several questions to you over the past
44:05
uh couple years I guess and and you've always been prompt to answer them and and uh have given good answers as far as I can tell of course no this is this is a this this is a great hobby for folks to be in and uh I try to try to
44:23
eliminate the fog if I can the fog of ignorance oh yeah and and the fog of misinformation there's a lot of misinformation that floats around out there and uh I have no acts to grind like I tell people I've made one of everything at one time in my life so uh
44:41
I can I can tell them exactly what they are and how they work yeah I I'm just kind of amazed that we spent the first half of the conversation talking about bleach when it's something near to dear to my
44:56
heart I've done it it once before you know but it's one of the it's one of the products out there that has been uh mispred and misrepresented and uh it gets in my
45:11
crawl a lot only because uh new Brewers go out they think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and they all have they all have uh bad experiences with it and uh not to say that it's bad
45:27
not to say that it's wrong it's just misinformation on it well I appreciate your helping to clear it up I try well thanks Charlie you're quite welcome well thanks again to Charlie tally and Charlie's Got a great laugh if
45:44
if I ever become a comedian he's going to be in the audience and uh we appreciate Charlie's uh excellent advice and being an excellent resource for the home Ru community as well next week another great resource to the home
46:01
brewing Community David logon of Y East returns to the podcast to talk about the life cycle of our favorite microorganism if you have Brewing questions show suggestions or just want to say howdy write to James basic brewing.com or just fill out the contact
46:18
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46:35
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47:07
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that's all until next week until then thanks for listening I'm James Spencer production help for basic Brewing radio and our website is provided by our buddy Kelly doson down there in Austin Texas who also designed our logo basic Brewing radio is a production of active voicing
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we'll talk to you next time everybody so [Music] long