Alan's Brewery

No Rinse Sterliser

When I recently started brewing again, several people recommend that I use a "no rinse steriliser" instead of Jik (a household bleach that I had used for sterlising the equipment and bottles for all my previous brews). Even my GP, who has become a rather avid brewer, said that it saves a great deal of time and effort. As I am always looking for shortcuts, this sounded as though it should be right up my alley!

The active ingredient in a sterilizer I could get my hands on is Sodium Percarbonate, which has the chemical formula 2Na2CO3·3H2O2 with the peroxide (H2O2) being the active ingredient in sterilization.


Figure 1: A no rinse steriliser commercially available for brewers.

What I normally do on bottling day is to use a large rectangular plastic container for washing and sterilising the bottles. So what I did was to follow the dosage, which is two tablespoons of the steriliser in five litres of water, and agitated the water until it looked as though all the crystals were dissolved. Then did the rinse, pouring the liquid back into my plastic container. After bottling, and rinsing the worst of the gunk out of the fermenter, I poured the liquid from the container into the fermenter and topped the fermenter up with water. I put the lid loosely on the fermenter and upended my plastic container on the fermenter lid. After a couple of days I went to finish cleaning the fermenter (the hardened gunk from the fermentation process needs time to soften). I was horrified to find that a residue from the no rinse steriliser had formed inside the container and on the lid of the fermenter.


Figure 2: Residue from the no rinse sterliser on the inside of the plastic container.

Figure 3: Residue from the no rinse sterliser on the inside of the plastic container. The crystal shape looks very similar to that of the original compound.

Figure 3: Residue from the no rinse sterliser on the lid of the fermenter.

Thoughts

What worries me is that this same residue is inside the bottles and kegs that have been sterilised with this no rinse sterliser and sodium is a problem if you have high blood pressure...