... it important to actually sterilize your equipment to eliminate all the Brett completely. Iodophor can do this, StarSan cannot...
I think we've done this dance before haven't we?
StarSan is completely able to kill Brettanomyces. It's just that the manufacturer hasn't spent the money to prove that it does. Here's the 5Star response:
"StarSan was tested and approved for Ecoli and Staph which are both gram-positive bacteria aka larger bacteria. So short answer no we haven't officially tested for the kill rate on yeast bacteria and mold. However knowing that StarSan kills those two bacteria in an EPA good lab practice testing I would be confident in it's effectiveness."
And from Jess Caudill, microbiologist and brewer at Wyeast, asked whether Brett. was harder to kill than other microbes:
"No. It is as easy to kill as any Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain of yeast. No crazy chemical cocktails are necessary... just your normal alkaline cleaning and acid sanitization. It's up to you if you want different equipment for your wild brews."
But the debate about acid vs. iodine misses the far more important points about removing Brett. from the brewery. And that's how good is your cleaning and do you have small scratches in your equipment that you can't clean effectively?
If you've got a large enough colony of any microbe in a crack or crevice, it won't matter which sanitiser you use, you probably won't be soaking it long enough to kill those cells in the middle of the colony. And then if it's Brett or a diastatic Sacchromyces, they'll be able to propogate themselves up and affect the beer.
If it's a post packaging clean and your equipment can stand the temperatures, then a minute at 60C/140F is the current advice for pasteurisation of any microbes likely to be in a brewery, that isn't a spore. And if it's a spore (which is very unlikely to be in a home brewery) it's probably a Sacch. Cervesiae spore.
And again this approach really relies on having done a good clean before the hot water. And that good clean generally assumes some time with a caustic solution to break up/remove organic material.
Personally I soak with caustic for mixed fermentation batches. Then hot water rinse and store the equipment. I go to 70C if the equipment is rated for that, otherwise hot tap water. Sanitising is StarSan on the brew day and so far I haven't had any cleaning/sanitising related cross contamination in over 7 years of mixed fermentation brewing. And that's with about every third batch being a mixed fermentation batch.
I don't have separate equipment for the mixed ferment batches and the cold side is all plastic. I do note down the date when I purchased the fermenters and replace them after a few years. I should probably start doing the same with the tubing.
