Sanitation

This most important part of brewing is sanitation.  Everything that comes in contact with the beer after it has been removed from the boil has to be sanitized.  There is some confusion on sanitized and sterilized.  The average homebrewer cannot sterilize his or her equipment since you have to use processes that just are not available or economically feasible.  What the home brewer does is sanitize.  This means that you first clean you equipment with products like B-Brite or One Step and then use a sanitizer like C-Brite, PBW,  Iodophor, or bleach.  I have used most of the products out there and have personally settled on cleaning with One Step and sanitizing with Iodophor.  By the way I have read that you can use any of the new Oxyclean type products out now instead of One Step as long as they don't contain fragrance.  One Step is basically oxygen based cleaner.  I like Iodophor since you only use a small amount for five gallons and it sanitizes in just a few minutes of contact.  One other nice thing about it is you can tell if it still has sanitizing abilities by the color of the water.  As long as it still remains amber color it is working. I would mention that it is Iodine based product and may stain clothes.  If a little gets on my cloths I rinse right away and have not had this problem.

I will go over the process I use when I sanitize clean equipment here.  First fill a clean sink or bucket with warm water and add enough Iodophor to turn the water a amber color (follow the directions on the bottle).  Next I place any hoses I will use in the water, making sure to fill them without any air bubbles.  Then I just put in all the other equipment like bubbler, stopper, turkey baster, filler, racking cane,  etc.  I usually let this sit for about five minutes.  While this is going on I also fill my carboy and add the Iodophor to it and let it sit for five minutes also.   You don't have to fill the carboy all the way to the top as long as you let each part of the surface stand for a few minutes in contact with the solution..

When you get to the bottling stage you will have to sanitize your bottle caps.  The way I do this is place some water in a sauce pan and put on the stove to boil.  When it starts to boil I add the bottle caps and let boil for 3-5 minutes.  Take off heat and cover with clean aluminum foil to keep airborne partials out.