PBW / Oxyclean residue in carboy

[11C_Recon]

Hello all,

I left a high concentration of PBW mixture in my carboy overnight to try and get rid of some black streaks (assuming mold from 3 years of non-use). Worked well, but I now have that white haze on the inside of my carboy. I did a little research and tried to remove the haze with 2 cups of vinegar in 6 gallons of water overnight, however, it didn't help.
My next step is to Star-san overnight and I have a few questions.

1- Will adding citric acid to help?
2- is it safe to rack into this carboy with the haze present?

 

[dcbrown73]

I've never experienced this as I rinse the oxiclean after washing.

Google around and I've heard people use starsan to help remove this, though I have no experience with it.

If you add very hot water to the carboy, pre-warm the carboy's exterior with warm water before putting very hot water inside of it. Warm to hot is okay, but cold to hot can crack or even shatter the carboy.

That said, I would start with starsan first before any other options and then avoid leaving oxiclean in the carboy for long periods of time. I've heard that oxiclean / water mixture loses it's strength after around six hours anyhow. Just add it, scrub it, and rinse it.

 

[Mismost]

I had a similar problem.....do you by chance use well water? I think that is what caused my problem....which looked like very bad water spots that were very hard to scrub off.
Wound up refilling the carboy with PW and soaking, dumping, and then rinsing the heck outta it!

 

[11C_Recon]

I've never experienced this as I rinse the oxiclean after washing.

Google around and I've heard people use starsan to help remove this, though I have no experience with it.

If you add very hot water to the carboy, pre-warm the carboy's exterior with warm water before putting very hot water inside of it. Warm to hot is okay, but cold to hot can crack or even shatter the carboy.

That said, I would start with starsan first before any other options and then avoid leaving oxiclean in the carboy for long periods of time. I've heard that oxiclean / water mixture loses it's strength after around six hours anyhow. Just add it, scrub it, and rinse it.

So I used star San at the normal dilution and it doesn’t look any better. I am thinking to just rack into it.

I had a similar problem.....do you by chance use well water? I think that is what caused my problem....which looked like very bad water spots that were very hard to scrub off.
Wound up refilling the carboy with PW and soaking, dumping, and then rinsing the heck outta it!

I used filtered NJ Tap water. Even filtered, it clouds my Star San right up though, so I use distilled when making sanitizer.

And yes, exactly like water spots. If PBW and star San won’t get rid of them, could it really harm the wine?

 

[dsamuelson]

Hello all,

I left a high concentration of PBW mixture in my carboy overnight to try and get rid of some black streaks (assuming mold from 3 years of non-use). Worked well, but I now have that white haze on the inside of my carboy. I did a little research and tried to remove the haze with 2 cups of vinegar in 6 gallons of water overnight, however, it didn't help.
My next step is to Star-san overnight and I have a few questions.

1- Will adding citric acid to help?
2- is it safe to rack into this carboy with the haze present?

I have found that one of these carboy cleaners on the end of a drill with some PBW will remove most anything.

 

[stickman]

I had the same thing happen to me many years ago. I left a batch of bottles to soak in a laundry tub full of well water and an alkaline cleaner. Needless to say, they all ended up with mineral deposits. You can try acid based lime removing cleaners like Lime Away etc. I have a chemical background and no patience, so I used Sno Bol, which is an HCl based cleaner; you have to be careful with these types of cleaners as they are stronger than most people realize.
Ultimately, I don't think the mineral deposits would affect the wine much, but many winemakers would prefer everything to be spotless.

 

[treesaver]

I just had this happen. I had a nasty carboy, with a lot of staining inside from some whit concorde that was made in it. I mixed up some pbw stronger than normal, and let sit for a week, as I was busy with other things. It lft a deposit on the inside everywhere but about two inches from the bottom. I had no other cleaners stronger than the pbw, so I mixed a new batch with very hot water. Nothing touched it, so I went out in the shop and got a strip of sheet metal and went to scraping. Got most of it off after a half hour, but there is still some left on the sides where the rings are. Still looking for a solution!