Cleaning sap storage barrel

[CliftonSap]

I use plastic, food grade barrels to store sap for cooking. I noticed that there may be mold on the inside of one of the barrels. What does everyone use to clean thier non-stainless steel equipment? I'm concerned bleach would taint the sap.

[PerryW]

I use bleach. I add a couple glugs of UNSCENTED Chlorox to a couple gallons of warm water (<5%) and scrub out my plastic & stainless. Just rinse well and you will not taint your sap

[happy thoughts]

jmho but I think you should scrub the inside good to remove as much of the mold as you can and any biofilm then rinse with plain water. Then use bleach but use at the recommeded rate for sanitizing plastic for food contact, a 200ppm bleach solution. To make it, add a tablespoon of clorox type laundry bleach for every Gallon of water. It needs some hang time to really sanitize so let it sit for 1-5 minutes. Empty and rinse well.

[happy thoughts]

If you scrub it first and rinse well, you wouldn't even need that much bleach solution. A couple of gallons would probably easily coat the sides of a large storage tank. Just swish it all around so it makes contact with every surface. Then let it sit a bit before rinsing. You'd be using very little chlorine so there won't be much for the plastic to absorb in such a short time.

[sugarwoodacres]

vinegar if youre still using . Good results doing this during our short season.

[jmp]

I used to use a weak bleach solution but have been using One Step no rinse cleaner (to clean) followed by Star San (to sanitize). Both are used heavily in the home brewing industry and work great. Star San foams up quite a bit and works great for cleaning our 275 gallon totes. Clean as a whistle, no residue, NO ODOR and NO FLAVOR! Best of all you can reuse throughout the season so you don't waste money on buing more cleaning supplies and/or mixing again. You can find at any local brewing supply or online. Here is one link: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/star-san.html

Good luck!

[Zamkev]

Don't mean to hijack this thread but I have a couple of brand new food grade barrels - do you think these need to be sanitized? I was going to rinse out with boiling water - but hadn't planned on doing anything else.

Thanks for any insight.

[jmp]

I tend to be very picky about sanitation. Personally I would clean them before use. Boiling water may not kill all the critters as it will cool rapidly as you swish it around. Just my two cents

[ADK_XJ]

Resurrecting this thread - I've been using star san this week to finish off anything touching raw sap after I scrub it down with water and multiple rinses. Having used that stuff for brewing I can say it's a huge time saver and have not had a single contamination issue. If there's anything more likely to spoil than maple sap it's a mixture of warm water grain and yeast...

[timmie]

Thanks for sharing.