Cleanliness is Godliness

“Sanitizing your equipment is one of the easiest and most fundamentally important things you will do. If you do not take caren to clean your equipment, the best recipe in the world will result dissapointment.” –Charlie Papazian, “The New Complete Joy of Homebrewing“

If I have only learned one thing in my homebrew quest, it’s that you can’t make a good beer with dirty equipment.

Though it’s nearly impossible to prevent some bacteria from finding their way into the brew-stew, improperly cleaned equipment can literally change the chemistry of the beer and produce a yucky taste nobody will enjoy. Each ingredient we add should be done intentionally so that the flavors come out just right.

But good tasting beer doesn’t just come from the ingredients. How you clean your equipment and store your freshly-brewed beer matter almost as much as what you’ve lovingly added into your batch. If you don’t clean and store with care, you may invite other “friends” into your brew that could change the beer for the worse.

Yeast, one of the four main ingredients of beer, plays a big role in the fermentation process. Not only do the tiny microorganisms eat the sugars from the malted barley, they also add flavor to the beer. There are thousands of yeast strains in the world; but they don’t all make good beer. They are all over the place, on our bodies and in the air–everywhere.

Over the years, brewers have developed a special yeast just for brewing, much the way bakers have developed their own yeast for breads. Conveniently named, brewer’s yeast is really the only yeast you want in your brew, which is why sanitation is crucial in the brewing process. If you don’t clean your equipment and cover your beer as it ferments, yeast from the air or bacteria from the equipment can spoil your brew.

There’s no one sanitizer that works the best, I’ve found–people seem to use what works for them. When my Dad brewed beer, he always bought “B-brite,” a bleach-free powder that he added to his cleaning water. Other people swear by a diluted bleach-water mix, while still others use sterilizers made from an iodine base.

Whatever the cleanser may be, use it it often and carefully clean your brewing materials. Once you’ve brewed up your beer in your sparkly-clean equipment, keep your brew properly covered and stored, and the yeast will do the rest for you!

In the meantime, you can relax with confidence, knowing you have the right yeast in a clean brew that will make the perfect batch of beer.

Cheers!