Proper sanitisers for microbrewing - what to use, where to source?

[bart]

I am looking at doing some brewing at a slightly larger scale, 100-200L batches. Up until now with my standard 20 litre all grain setup I have just used sodium metabisulphite and a bit of sodium percarbonate for cleaning and sanitising - would like to use starsan but its not available here in Dunedin and the sodies seem to do the trick. 

However using a bigger setup and with many more parts involved (and lots of stainless steel of course) I was wondering what are the conventional cleaning and sanitation regimes for these kinds of setups? 

Also, where can one source the necessary sanitisers for a reasonable price? 

Thanks in advance for any tips you guys can give me! Cheers, Bart

[Reece]

Hey mate if I was you I would probably look down the route of steam for your sanitising. You may need the initial outlay for a steam cleaner or kettle setup but the running costs should be much smaller than the chemical route.

[bart]

Thanks for the tip Reece - I like it because it is chemical free too. However since I am, like many, a mere peasant of a home brewer looking to make the steps up to the next scale of brewing without a huge amount of capital behind me, I'd be interested to hear the more standard 'conventional' cleaning and sanitation methods that people employ at those scales. Will definitely do some follow up research on the steam method though!

[Aran Brown]

Brewers Coop in Auckland finally have starsan on its own available.  From memory about $40 a pop - but at .64ml per litre of water and reuseable until it goes cloudy it works out to be pretty inexpensive in the long run, plus it breaks down in to nutrient for yeast.  I used to use brewshield but wont go back unless I run out of starsan (some time in 2014 - and I brew most weeks albeit small scale batches)

[Bryan Livingston]

Brewers Coop has 8, 16 and 32 ounce bottles of Star San in stock.

[Ralph]

There are plenty of cleaners and sanitisers for dairy sheds if you pop along to one of those farm supply warehouses. You can pick up 20L of cleaners/sterilisers etc without much bother.

Other cleaning companies stock and sell things like iodophor which is a no rinse sanitiser.

Some other people talking about sanitisers etc on this site here http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/forum/topics/no-rinse-sanitizer

[FatD]

we do 1200L batches. use wineskin for cleaning then citric acid and bit of PMS. haven't had a problem yet. real cheap for a big 20kg bag of citric acid. is it$30 or something?

[Edmund Barker]

http://www.thebrewhouse.co.nz/webapps/category/88908/215726/51894 for Starsan. I reckon if you talk to Cory, he'll probably be able to order larger quantities.