Cleaning fermentor without PBW

I sometimes feel people get awfully carried away with cleaning and sanitizing. That’s not saying that a sound cleaning and sanitation is not necessary. Brewing is a VERY robust process. Pitching appropriate amounts of yeast is key to out compete low levels of contamination that are in the wort after boiling, chilling, transferring. Brewing is not a sterile process nor does it need to be.

Again slippery slope.
Maybe I will just hose everything off with hot water from now on, because for lack of better words I am lazy or cheap and will hope my cleaning on cold side equip is good enough and just always hope the yeast pitch is robust enough to out compete. Pishposh. Just clean your equipment like normal folks do and call it a day. Would you be happy to learn that your local brewery just hoses off their fermentors and uses no caustic, due to the fact that brewing is a robust enough process and yeast will always out compete. I sure hope you really, really enjoy infected beer that much as its a loaded gun to suggest otherwise. You cannot tell me this super lax regimen is norm for any processing of food stuffs in general.

I have suggested no hard regiment whatsoever. Simply use whatever surfactant you have available and clean to bare surface each time to the best of your ability. You will then never reduce the effectiveness of your sanitizer. Real simple, kinna norm for most all brewers. Nothing over the top in anyway. So calm down. :wink:

So the pro lazy clean supporters tell me this whats your chances of infection over 1%-100% depending on conditions?. Or is it best to try to shoot for under 1% because you know for a fact you cleaned to the best of your ability? No one here has said you have to sterilize to have clean equip. Nor can you reach that level and yes it is not necessary. But to suggest that less than 100% sanitation on cold side equipment is normal, is pure fantasy land fiction. If you don’t agree, be happy and do it your own stubborn way then and I wish you the best.

But to suggest to new brewers that being lax on cleaning/sanitation in any way is again a slippery slope to adding unnecessary hurdles to their success. Why would you want to be in the camp that advocates failure?

I can’t believe how easy it is to get you worked up. I’m not going to argue with you. I’ll just say that I never suggested cleaning with only water and it wasn’t an attack on you.

My only point is I don’t want newbies thinking they absolutely must use product x to make good beer. Clean is clean, whether you got there with water, detergent, oxyclean, PBW, or whatever. In my case its more about being cheap than being lazy, since cleaning with hot water is actually quite a bit more work. And I would have no problem at all drinking beer made by a pro who used that method, providing they also thoroughly inspect to make sure its truly clean, and then follow up with a sanitizer. But for the big boys, time is money and a less than perfect batch could put them out of business, so of course they are going to use a professional cleaner.

ITsPossible mentioned using a caustic cleaner like the pro breweries do. I have cleaned my last 6 carboys with a caustic cleaner. Even though I was chastised for suggesting it a couple months back for cleaning dirty bottles.

It works very well. Faster, cheaper, and with less effort than PBW or OxiClean.

That’s the lazy mans way. :wink:

Ashton Lewis aka Mr. Wizard from BYO suggests “cleaning” involves using two of the three components of cleaning, namely (1) Hot Temperature, (2) abrasion/scrubbing, and/or (3) detergent/chemical. That’s a pretty bad paraphrase, but I think the gist is appropriate to this thread.