Cleaning removes soil. Sanitising reduces microbes on a surface that is already clean. Homebrewers collapse those words and then wonder why a pale ale tastes like the stout that lived in the tap last month.
The heritage URL is unchanged. The text is new.
Clean
Use a brewing cleaner meant for fermenters, kegs and bottles, or another alkaline cleaner the manufacturer describes as suitable for beer soil. Soak. Use a soft brush on taps, dip tubes and bottle necks. Rinse as the cleaner’s directions require. A white or brown ring at the fermenter waterline is not “character.” It is last time’s beer.
Dishwashers are uneven. They can help bottles if you understand their limits; they do not replace a brush in a bottleneck or a disassembled keg post.
Avoid abrasive pads that scratch plastic into a hiding place for residue.
Then sanitise
Once the surface is bare, apply a sanitiser as labelled. No-rinse acid sanitisers are common in home brew. Contact time matters. So does concentration. Mixing “a splash” by eye is how people both fail to sanitise and leave flavour behind.
Sanitise the fermenter, lid, airlock, tap, spoon, hydrometer, test jar, siphon, bottles or keg, and your hands if they are about to go into the vessel. The boil sanitises wort that is actually boiling. It does not sanitise the fermenter you are about to pour into.
What not to improvise
Household bleach can sanitise in careful, well-rinsed use. It is also a fast way to ruin a beer with chlorophenol if you guess. If you use it, understand rinse requirements and do not mix chemicals.
Do not mix cleaners and sanitisers into a secret soup. Do not store a “sanitiser bucket” for weeks and trust it.
Kegs and lines
Lines hold beer. Beer spoils in lines. Clean them on a schedule you can keep. Disassemble posts. Replace tired o-rings. The kegging page assumes this work.
After the brew
Rinse soon. Dried krausen is harder than wet krausen. Dry gear so you are not storing a damp plastic bag of smells.
Cleaning is not a brand ranking. The old site sold cleaners in a miscellaneous tree. Those URLs 301 to equipment. This page keeps the method.
A clean process is the cheapest flavour upgrade in Australian home brew, and it does not require a statistic to justify it.
Brew-day choreography
Lay out dirty and clean zones. The spoon that stirred the dog bowl does not enter the fermenter. The hydrometer that sat on the bench gets sanitised again. Your hands are a utensil.
Cooling coils go into cleaner after they have been in wort. Plate chillers need a cleaning regime you will actually follow or they become a museum of last month’s hop.
Bottles
Inspect for cracks. Soak labels if you reuse commercial bottles — and accept that some glues will never leave. Rinse until there is no soil. Sanitise before filling. A bottle tree is convenient. A dishwasher is optional. A dirty bottleneck is how a good batch becomes a mixed case of faults.
Water rinse as a superstition
“Hot water is enough” is the most common shortcut and the least defensible. Hot water helps some soils. It does not replace cleaner, and it does not replace sanitiser on a cooled surface that will hold beer for weeks.
Chemicals you keep on a shelf
Label them. Keep them away from children. Do not store sanitiser in an old drink bottle. Follow the manufacturer’s directions; this site will not invent a millilitre dose for a brand it does not sell.
If a cleaner is not rinsing as you expect, read the label again before you invent a second chemical.
After infections
If a batch was infected, take the fermenter apart. Replace cheap plastic if it is scored. Boil or thoroughly clean what can take it. Start the next beer only when the vessel looks empty of last time. Infection is not a style unless you pitched a culture on purpose.