Quick question:

[cerevisia]

What do you good people use to sterilize your brew buckets/carboys/brewing equipment etc?

[James P]

10ml plain, cheap, unscented household bleach to 5L water

From AHB

[jt]

Try bleach & white vinegar - many threads (except here) - originastes most recently from the 5star chemical guy.
From memory 30ml each mixted into 19l water - don't mix bleach & vinegar together first though

[Stu McKinlay]

Read up on what everyone says all over the place.
I use Iodophor. No sweat. No phenolics. No handling issues. You can SEE when it is losing its power (colour drops away). You can use it on everything in the brewing process.

Cleaning is often under rated though. If you clean the bejezzus out of everything after brewing, and then give it a an easy going over before sanitising, you'll probably be fine with any sanitiser.

[cerevisia]

Oh hey thanks man, yeah I normally clean all my stuff pretty well before and after brewing so I should be ok with bleach for now. I'll just really rinse it out with water.

[Pilgrim]

Re: NapySan for cleaning, the active ingredient is Sodium Percarbonate. I checked out all of the labels at the local Pack-n-Save and found a wide variation in the amount of active ingredient. NappySan was 18%, the best was Clorox Oxi Magic at 33%, for a similar price. So I clean with Oxi Magic and Sanitize with StarSan from Brewer's Coop.

[Barry]

Iodophor vs Starsan, paraphrasing from a presentation I saw by Jon Herskovits (Owner of 5 Star who make Starsan):
Which is better? It depends on what you mean by iodophor. Straight, unadulterated iodophor is a very effective anti-microbial, but not a very good sanitiser. Why? It doesn't get into most places that need sanitising. It lacks "surfectants" - the additives that reduce the surface tension of the whole solution allowing it to get into tiny pores and truly sanitise the entire container effectively.
The iodophor I use is Klenz, which is a complex blend of iodophor/surfectants/detergents that most likely does just as good a job as Starsan.
Starsan is excellent stuff, so are certain blends/brands of iodophor.

[Brendon]

Shameless plug - you can get iodophor at libertybrewing.co.nz

Check out http://libertybrewing.co.nz/?q=node/75

[Mike Neilson]

Man just got some brewery sanitizer man it powerfull stuff!!

[Brendon]

peracetic acid based?
Personally, that would be what I would use if I could get it at a reasonable price.

[Mike Neilson]

Yip!!