Beer Forum

With piping, hoses, two pumps, three 3-way valves, three vessels, an integral chiller - - -well I got a lot to keep clean.

Recently I stumbles upon Borax. When hydrated it converts some of the water to hydrogen peroxide which then serves as a general sanitizer. It's not fast like Star San or hypochorous acid but give it time and it'll get the job done. I've found nothing anywhere that informs me that it's bad on materials like 304 SST.

I'm wondering if a borax solution with some EDTA would make a good soak solution for my little brewery.

What all do the collected brewers think?

It may be more useful as a cleaner than sanitizer. I don't know what the necessary contact time would be to kill, but may want to be careful with where you dump the rinse water (herbicide activity). Borax produces an alkaline pH, so not sure how effective a mix with EDTA would be for you.

spiderwrangler wrote:It may be more useful as a cleaner than sanitizer. I don't know what the necessary contact time would be to kill, but may want to be careful with where you dump the rinse water (herbicide activity). Borax produces an alkaline pH, so not sure how effective a mix with EDTA would be for you.

Well the uses that it is commonly put to include a wide range of sanitizing applications. It's supposed to kill bacteria molds spores etc. Not fast like a Quaternary solution or alcohol but kill it is supposed to.

I don't think the alkalinity of the base solution into which opne addts EDTA make much differenct to the salt's ability to chelate the minerals that life forms need to exist. Mind you I have only anecdotal evidence to say this which would include the use of EDTA in Mayonnaise and a plethora of other foods to stamp down on bacterial development as well as I own use of the stuff in hide glue to make it so I don't have to refrigerate it to keep it mold free.

Interestingly borax is also a good flux for welding, the ancient Japanese sword smiths used it when folding their steel to make laminations

On another forum a user posted a recipe for homemade PBW using 2 parts oxyclean and 1 part Red Devil TSP.
I use sun oxygen cleaner from my local dollar store instead of the oxyclean.
It works really well and costs a lot less than PBW. I can't speak to any of the chemistry just to say it works. Any thoughts?

The little looking I did, shows that it can be used as a fungal suppressor and not as much of an anti-bacterial agent. For sanitizing, I wouldn't stray too far from what is traditionally accepted in brewing/food industry. But that's just me being cautious.