Star San

[Bonenose]

Have just bought some starsan and cannot find any mention anywhere on wether I should be using pre boiled water when I mix up a batch. Is it necessary to use boiled water?

 

[Mardoo]

Nope.

 

[technobabble66]

As Mardoo, nope.
It's a sanitizing agent, so it'd be pretty useless if it couldn't even sanitize it's own diluting solution [emoji1]

However, having said that, I believe some water sources that are hard (ie: high in minerals) can be less than ideal as the minerals "consume" the acids in the starsan.
Similarly, alkaline water can neutralize the acids. Generally Aussie water (read: eastern seaboard) is not sufficiently alkaline (or hard) to be a major issue, maybe just add a whisker more starsan syrup to counter the base.

 

[kaisenberg]

If you guys can't be bothered calculating how much star-san to dilute, I made this simple calculator (http://www.thebrewlist.com/calculator/sanitiser-dilution). Also calculates PBW, Iodophor and OxiClean.

The ratios I use:
5gal water =

• 1 fl oz Star-san
• 1.5 oz PBW
• 0.5 oz Iodophor
• 1.0 oz OxiClean

And of course you can use metric units as well

 

[pnorkle]

I think of more benefit (to us in AU, and other countries that use the Metric system) would be a calc that tells you how many fl oz per litre, given that the measure on the side of the bottle is in fl oz, but we're using (probably) litres of water to add it to.

 

[stm]

5gal water =

Why do you need to make up 5 gallons at a time?