Fearing The Napisan Foam

[peterhop]

Napisan bubbles and feels slippery, which indicates to me it has detergent in it. My mother warned me never to let detergent near homebrew or I would loose my head.

With my previous cleaner I rinsed my bottles twice in hot water before sanitising. Do I now need to rinse more to get rid of the napisan detergent ?

 

[Thirsty Boy]

yes its "detergent" - the slipperiness is from the alkalais in it - they aren't what kill your head, its the surfactants that mess with the surface tension that stuff up your head, just like rise aid in the dishwasher. But they are there is nappisan as well.

You need to make sure nappisan is rinsed properly and well - its a laundry product not a food product, so easy rinsing from surfaces is not a property thats designed into it.

I think PBW is a better choice, its more effective than Nappisan and it rinses better - but I used nappisan for ages with no problems. 2 or 3 rinses under very hot tap water and you should be good to go to the sanitising step.

If you have any issue with head retention - it is a place to start looking though.

TB

 

[RdeVjun]

Fair question, the fears are well- founded. I'll soak just about everything in perc (i.e. Napisan, sodium percarbonate) every few months, but it is almost impossible to rinse all of the residue off with our tap water here as it is neutral to alkaline, so I now add 1 tsp citric acid to a bucket of warm rinse water. Works brilliantly and uses a lot less water overall (so beneficial where water is scarce), just do a final rinse with plain water then drain (and sanitise later).

Once I did a batch of bottles with this perc soak and rinsed with just town water and not very thoroughly, later I started sanitising them with Starsan and part way through the batch the foam had vanished and it had gone cloudy, I guessed it was being neutralised by the perc residue so I had to rinse them again and then re- sanitise, that's when I started using the citric acid rinse. I'd imagine any weakly acidic solution would do, sometimes I use citric acid to adjust pH of the mash and sparge water so I have it on hand.

Oh, and plus what TB says!

Edit: Rinsing effectiveness depends upon your rinse water composition, most folks will use reticulated/ town water, here it is not as effective as it could be so I give it a helping hand with citric acid, but it may not need that in other locales.

 

[peterhop]

Thanks for your informative and fast answers - while my bottles were standing soaking on the sink. I'll add a bit of vinegar to the first rinse.

 

[Ross]

All alkaline washes should really be followed by an acid rinse. I use Starsan or saniclean for this purpose as they are cheap & effectively sanitising at the same time. Any acid based sanitiser though should do the job.

Cheers Ross

 

[Bribie G]

I use pure Sodium Percarbonate - (running low, I might have to organise a bulk buy). When it's done its job, it turns into Sodium Carbonate, good old 'washing soda' that people used in the old days. Not poisonous (some foods have it added) but I prefer not to have unnecessary chemicals ending up in my brew and, guessing that it's alkaline in nature I'll do Rde's trick with the citric acid from now on. I've got a big tub of it left over from my sugar inverting experiments last year. It's only a couple of dollars from Woolies.

Edit: Ross beat me to it, yes of course I should have realised about the Starsan, being a Phosphoric acid based rinse. Coca cola should work too

 

[RdeVjun]

All alkaline washes should really be followed by an acid rinse. I use Starsan or saniclean for this purpose as they are cheap & effectively sanitising at the same time. Any acid based sanitiser though should do the job.

Thanks Ross. With your acidic rinse, do you mean rinse & re- use or rinse & discard? The rinse & re- use is where I'm running into trouble with bottles, as it makes its way down the line it was getting progressively neutralised. Obviously that's less likely to be an issue with fermenters & kegs etc, but with bottles where it goes from one to the next, to the next etc there seemed to be an issue.

Hope that citric works for you BribieG, seems to for me. Say, doesn't everything just sparkle after a decent perc soak?! Even manky old tallies from the 70s, apart from the odd scratch they come up as good as new! I've been using it for about six months now and it never fails to amaze. Obviously it doesn't take much to captivate me...

 

[Ross]

With bottles I'd be rinsing with some fresh water first & then finishing off with the acid sanitiser.

cheers Ross

 

[RdeVjun]

With bottles I'd be rinsing with some fresh water first & then finishing off with the acid sanitiser.

Yep, I do that Ross but it takes several rinses and even then it is still slightly slippery, plus I had that sanitiser issue previously. I think it is problematic because our town water is neutral to alkaline (varies quite a bit IMO), my perc soak is pretty strong though so maybe I should ease up with that. I'll keep the citric acid rinse in the process, I'm loathe to waste so much water per bottle rinsing (several litres) and not wanting to lose some to a poor pre- bottling sanitation.

 

[leiothrix]

Are you sure it is the bottles that are slippery, and not your hands? Alkaline cleaners will eat the oils on your skin and basically turn them in to soap. The bottles might be fine, but your hands will still feel slippery.

Rob.

 

[RdeVjun]

Yep! I had thought of that and tested it to my satisfaction, plus I now use gloves as it is indeed pretty hard on the skin. Its OK, the acidic dip allows me to save water that would otherwise be lost to rinsing, plus it is quicker, so we're all happy. Thanks all the same though. :icon_cheers:

Ps. Sorry OPer for the hijack!

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

sodium percarbonate is allowed for use as a food grade sanitizer under the ANZFS schedule...IE...its non toxic

 

[moultan]

I rinse bottles when i've finished with them store them on the tree then rinse with boiling water before filling again ..;. have not had a problem yet

 

[Wolfy]

IF you are using pure sodium percarbonate I'd not fear it at all - it probably does not even need much of a rinse.
As BribieG said, it breaks down into nothing more harmful than washing soda (a sometimes-food-additive) and Hydrogen Peroxide (which is released as a gas).
Having said that, I do as Ross suggested, sodium percarb wash/soak, quick rinse and then an acid (Starsan) sanitiser.

However since Napisan is only about 20-30% sodium percarb and 70-80% other unknown laundry-type detergents and other agents, I'd suggest being much more pedantic about rinsing it off.