Citric acid + Sodium Meta

[Kalel]

Working for a soft drinks company i have luckily access to ample chemicals. We use Caustic acid for our cleaning but for odvious reasons this is impratical for home brewing. However i've heard that Citric acid and Sodium metabisulphate (which are put into our drinks) together are particular good. Is this true? Cheers.

[Aleman]

Is this true?

No

[Manx Guy]

As far as I know - they are preservatives used in the soft drinks industry...

They may be useful in wine making but not much use for cleaning...

You can use Sodium Meta. to neutralise chlorine in water for brewing or in an FV after using a chlorine based cleaner- these are the potential uses in home brewing...

[boingy]

No, unless you are an old school brewer, in which case it was pretty much the standard way to sanitise. I used sod met and citric acid as a sanitiser for many years with great success although I've no idea how effective it really was. I cleaned everything well beforehand (with just soap and water). These days, things have moved on and there are much better things to use.

[Trunky]

[Kalel]

Cheers for the replies. While i knew they were preservatives,when i heard they could be used as sterilising agents and were abundant and free i thought it would save abit of cash. But i shall stick to the shop stuff.

[boingy]

I'd forgotten about those fumes too. Occasionally I would get a real lungful and have a sort of "half cough" for about an hour afterwards.

[Kev888]

At one time (ah, the innocent days of cjj Berry) I used this sort of stuff. With very thorough cleaning beforehand it 'mostly' worked 'enough' as a sanitiser, but was marginal with anything that wasn't already pretty much prestine and unscratched. These days I'm now sold on starsan for sanitising, but even good old budget bleach beats it hands down in my view and I rather wish I'd tried it in the past too.

As mentioned the metabisulphate still has a place in neutralising chlorine from brew and rinse water, though you only need tiny quantities so it won't save all that much dosh, but I no longer see it as a sanitiser myself.

Cheers
kev