Sanitize or sterilize?

[Drink to much]

I was asking about sanitizing my equipment and was told the following. Sanitizing was all about cleaning and in order to kill all the bacteria I would need to sterilize. I was also told that in order to sterilize there were only 2 ways to do this,1 chlorine and the other with heat. My source is suspect so take that into consideration. My question is when I am looking for a product to kill the bacteria should I look for a product that will sterilize or is this a mater of semantics?
Thanks

[fuji6100]

sanitizing is removing 99.9% of the bacteria (or other organisms)and reducing it to an acceptable level that is not likely to cause infection.

Sterilizing is the absolute removal of all microbes and is nearly impossible in the home environment due to circulating microbes in the air. To sterilize at home would require air filtration and wearing a mask, gown, hair cover, shoe covers, and goggles.

Making homebrewed beer doesn't require sterilization. Sanitation is quite sufficient.

[wortchillergoal]

There are a number of good sanitizers available to the homebrewer. Chlorine is one but needs to be rinsed well. There are others that are no rinse like Iodophor(sp) and Star San I believe.

One of the resdient pro brewers recommends staying away from chlorine and Iodophor for the home brewer. I can't remember which, Star-San maybe, he suggests but hopefully he will respond to this.

[danno]

Star-San. get some, you won't be disappointed...

[brewmonkey]

Sanitizing is the best that you can hope for as sterilizing would be impossible. Sani'ing will take care of anything that is going to cause problems and I agree, Star-San is the best stuff on the market for homebrewers.

[wortchillergoal]

Originally posted by brewmonkey
Sanitizing is the best that you can hope for as sterilizing would be impossible. Sani'ing will take care of anything that is going to cause problems and I agree, Star-San is the best stuff on the market for homebrewers.

Thamk you for the back up Brewmonkey.

[kevin]

Is star san reusable if so for how long or is it better to just dump after cleaning?

[danno]

as long as the pH is below 3, you can reuse it.

[stronk]

You might want to take into consideration that you can use iodophor as a starch testing liquid when you're doing a mash. At least, that's what I've heard.

[brewmonkey]

Originally posted by stronk
You might want to take into consideration that you can use iodophor as a starch testing liquid when you're doing a mash. At least, that's what I've heard.

You can indeed but iodophor is a horrible choice IMHO for use in a brewery. Failure to use it carefully will ruin a batch of beer quickly.

[c0nsumer]

Originally posted by danno
Star-San. get some, you won't be disappointed...

I actually might need to drop using Star-San in favor of going back to Iodophor. I was out of sanitizer, so I decided to get a BIG bottle of Star-San and give that a try. Well, after this last time bottling (and my first time using it) I had some odd skin problems on my hands for the next few days. Sort of dry skin-like, but only the outside layer. A facial scrub and some hand lotion for a few days took care of it, but it was still a pain. I think it's the reaction to it's being an acid-based sanitizer.

That said, I'll give it another try, but if it doesn't work out, I'll end up picking up one of the large bottles of Iodophor and going back to that.

Although I do like how Star-San doesn't get ruined by heat nor absorbed by certain things. (I have a nylon mesh bag I pour the wort through to remove the hops. It pulled all the color from my first batch of sanitizer, meaning it removed the iodine from the water, making the sanitizer useless.)

-Steve