sanitising after infection

[crafty john]

Hi all
I have recently had an infection in my latest AG, I have scrubbed everything clean with a soda crystal solution, I usually sanitise with thin bleach at a rate of 5ml per litre but I want to make sure all traces of any nasties are dealt with, would a stronger bleach solution do the job or is there anything else that anyone could recommend to do the job?

Cheers as allways
John

[jubby]

I'm not an expert, but i believe bleach is amongst the best at destroying bacteria, but i would use a higher concentration for normal disinfecting and in this case use 270ml of thin bleach per litre or 60ml of standard bleach per litre. That gives you a 'heavy duty cleaning' concentration and GW says 20 min soak and plenty of rinsing.
For what it's worth, I use 300ml of Domestos in 30 litres for normal cleaning. Be careful with stainless steel though.

[Kev888]

Do you know what the infection was or what stage it came from? If not I'd be tempted to go belt and braces with everything, paying particular attention to post boil but not overlooking any pre-boil stages either.

I'd probably ignore the cost in this instance and use one of the proprietry homebrew cleaner/sanitisers (richies, chempro etc) for a long soak of all equipment, hoses etc, then pour boiling water over the walls of FVs etc (for where any scratches, joins etc may inhibit chemical access) and take apart and/or boil anything that can be boiled in a saucepan or soak the individual parts of anything else in more cleaner/sanitiser. Then finish up with the strong bleach as Jubby suggests (keeping contact time low where any metal is involved) and extensive rinsing.

This is a scattergun approach and I'm no chemist so there may be more informed opinions, but whilst I often use household products day-to-day I've found by experience that the proprietry cleaners/sanitisers are really very good for more serious jobs. (BTW, if I'm not using starsan I'd normally use 10ml of thin bleach per L for routine sanitising and so far I've had no issues - may be worth increasing the dose a bit for the future).

Cheers
Kev

[crafty john]

Thanks for the replies guys, I will give everything that came in to contact with my brew a proper going over. I only have chemipro oxy and it says on the tub for light duty cleaning, so I will invest in something a bit stronger.