Cleaning equipment.

Ive been brewing some meads and ciders and ginger beers and they are going well.

But everytime I clean i use boiling water to sterilise the equipment.

Is there a simpler more energy efficient technique for sterilization that wont negatively affect my offgrid water treatment or the environment?  

Are you talking about bottles and jars? Airlocks?

Why would you feel this would ...

T said, "negatively affect my offgrid water treatment or the environment

When I want to clean my brewing equipment I use soap and water. If there is beer stone I use a soft brush and vigorous brushing. When it comes to sanitizing equipment I use a iodine based chemical and dilute it in water . There is a sanitizer that is acid based. I have used this in the past but having hard water was an issue and keeping the ph in the right range was hard.  I remember reading in one of Stephen Harrod Buhner's books ( I think it is in the book "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers") about using herbs to clean and sanitize equipment but I have not tried this out.  

Anne Miller wrote:Are you talking about bottles and jars? Airlocks?

Why would you feel this would ...

T said, "negatively affect my offgrid water treatment or the environment

Alot of standard sanitizing products are Chlorine based.

T Adey wrote:

Anne Miller wrote:Why would you feel this would ...

T said, "negatively affect my offgrid water treatment or the environment

Alot of standard sanitizing products are Chlorine based.

The permies forum is organic or better so I would hope that no one would suggest such a thing!

Lemon juice, vinegar are some things that I would consider.

Or even baking soda which is a bicarbonate of soda.

Soap and water and good air-drying, also.

Anne Miller wrote:

T Adey wrote:

Anne Miller wrote:Why would you feel this would ...

T said, "negatively affect my offgrid water treatment or the environment

Alot of standard sanitizing products are Chlorine based.

The permies forum is organic or better so I would hope that no one would suggest such a thing!
.

Obviously, thats why im lookig for alternatives.

T Adey wrote:
But everytime I clean i use boiling water to sterilise the equipment.

Could you walk me through how you clean and sanitize your equipment? Are you having any issues with beers, meads and ciders not fermenting well? Or having off flavors or smells?

If you have smaller bits to sanitize, then boiling water seems like a good solution- you can reuse the water for other things, and are just out the fuel for heating it.
I have some larger/unboilable kit that requires sanitizing at times- in these cases I often use hydrogen peroxide, which can be sprayed directly on what I need and soon neutralizes itself.
I mostly just work with clean, not sterile- soap, water, and sunshine if possible. But I know some things (my copper heat exchange rig, for example) are stored in places where they might be in contact with animal feces, etc, those I will clean as well as sterilize just to be sure.

soap and hot (but not boiling) water here. 11+ years of making wild-yeast mead.

When I started out brewing, I used a dry heat sterilization (kills spores) method for glass: 350 F degree oven for 2 hours at 5,000 ft. This works fine but as other posters (Tereza and Greg) have mentioned, I learned that sterilized bottles are unnecessary. Due to the sugars in beer, and the fact that the beer yeast is alive (not sterile), clean and sanitized bottles are fine. Therefore, if you don’t want to use water, you could dry heat sanitize your bottles at a lower temperature. I do not have the oven time and temp calculation for sanitizing at your altitude but many brewing sites recommend 350 F for one hour.

I use 2.5 gallons of StarSan solution (.5 oz) for soaking everything after cleaning then mop the floor and clean the bathrooms with the remaining solution. This is a very efficient use of water as no rinsing is required after using the solution. The acid solution when diluted according to the label is safe for the environment.

Sanitizing is important to avoid introducing bacteria and airborne yeasts to the finished wort as it will ruin the unique flavor of specialty yeasts (unless like Greg you want these wild flavors instead of packaged products). Wild yeasts and bacteria can colonize the finished wort if the brewer uses non-sanitized tools, bottles, caps and other materials.

For oven sanitizing (or or any other method), pre-wash the bottles thoroughly with small amount of dish soap, hot water and bottle brush. Air dry bottles upside down on wood dowel peg rack. If preparing a large glass carboy in the oven, cover top with foil to provide extra protection while it sits upright while brewing until the next day. Let carboy cool inside the oven before removing to prevent shock. Before loading the oven, visually inspect for any residues one more time. Load the oven with the dry bottles on their sides. Three oven racks hold 60 bottles easily (5 gal batch plus extras). Use the cool oven as the storage station for the bottles until ready to fill (less handling).

One question for brewers: would a distilled white vinegar solution work as a sanitizer as Anne suggests? I know that acetic acid bacteria is a brew destroyer but what about distilled (dead) white vinegar? I would love to simplify my sanitizing system to use white vinegar instead of StarSan.

for what it’s worth, i tend to grow yeast bugs up for my meads. so i’m not just hoping for random wild colonization, but i’m clearly not particularly worried about it either.

Starsan has been my standard, it's a food grade sanitizer, a strong acid that bursts cell walls, clouds when it's no longer effective, and completely edible.  It works great, doesn't stain things, and can be stored for use later as long as it doesn't cloud.  I often use a spray bottle of it to sanitize my counter after doing messy things like cutting up lots of meat if juices get all over.

Ive managed to find some oxygen based cleaner (here in Portugal) which is also reported to be safe for the environment.

Thanks for all you replies. I was really struggling to find good information, but knew there must be plenty of people doing /thinking about less toxic methods.

I don't know there other ways better than boiling. Maybe you can try ultraviolet disinfection, or just leave them under the sunlight.