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Be sure that all of the equipment you are going to use is as clean as you can get it, and as sanitised as it is possible for you to make it, a lot is said in Winemaking about sterilising things, it is difficult to achieve as we cannot eliminate all living organisms, we can however sanitise things, and we should make the effort to do it as well as we can (you cant ruin good wine by being too clean)
so we need to first get rid of all of the dirt (visible dirt) by cleaning in hot water, give everything a good wash, don't scrub plastics hard though we don't want scratches.
There are products labelled steriliser available from home brew shops, and they work, but require a lot of rinsing afterwards.
You can also use baby bottle sterilising stuff (Milton etc) but again repeated rinsing is the order of the day.
A lot of winemakers use bleach, I wouldn't recommend it, ad if you do decide to use it be certain that you rinse twice as much as you think you need to, and then do it again, and never use scented bleach.
My preferred option is to clean with really hot water, and then sanitise using a sulphite solution.
I use a 10% sulphite solution extensively in my Winemaking, its so easy, and I strongly recommend that everyone else do the same, you will see how useful it is as we progress, to make this solution put 50g of sodium metabisulphite (or potassium metabisulphite) into your measuring jug, and top up with warm water to the 500ml mark, and there you have it, this is an effective sanitising solution for all of your equipment, I keep some in a spray bottle for sanitising equipment before use, spoons hydrometers etc, spray with sulphite, rinse and go....but 5 Min's contact time with this solution and things are sanitised, it can be made a little more effective with the addition of 1 teaspoon of citric acid, but then it doesn't keep as well.
store it in a tightly stoppered container, and it will keep for up to 6 months.
so we need to first get rid of all of the dirt (visible dirt) by cleaning in hot water, give everything a good wash, don't scrub plastics hard though we don't want scratches.
There are products labelled steriliser available from home brew shops, and they work, but require a lot of rinsing afterwards.
You can also use baby bottle sterilising stuff (Milton etc) but again repeated rinsing is the order of the day.
A lot of winemakers use bleach, I wouldn't recommend it, ad if you do decide to use it be certain that you rinse twice as much as you think you need to, and then do it again, and never use scented bleach.
My preferred option is to clean with really hot water, and then sanitise using a sulphite solution.
I use a 10% sulphite solution extensively in my Winemaking, its so easy, and I strongly recommend that everyone else do the same, you will see how useful it is as we progress, to make this solution put 50g of sodium metabisulphite (or potassium metabisulphite) into your measuring jug, and top up with warm water to the 500ml mark, and there you have it, this is an effective sanitising solution for all of your equipment, I keep some in a spray bottle for sanitising equipment before use, spoons hydrometers etc, spray with sulphite, rinse and go....but 5 Min's contact time with this solution and things are sanitised, it can be made a little more effective with the addition of 1 teaspoon of citric acid, but then it doesn't keep as well.
store it in a tightly stoppered container, and it will keep for up to 6 months.
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