The best way to ruin a good brew day is to not have any sanitizer on hand. But what can you do if you make it to that point? Well, we got some common household items you can use if you’re in a pinch.

Bleach

You can use bleach to sanitize your brewing equipment. The rule of thumb is to use 1 cap full of bleach for every 1 gallon of water. You will want to make sure the bleach is non-scented. Scented bleach can lead to odd smells and flavors in your brew. When using the bleach, you will want to mix up the solution of 1 cap to 1 gallon of water and then sanitize like you normally would. The only difference is that you will want to rinse your fermenter, bottles, and utensils afterward until the smell of bleach is gone. This will help to prevent you from getting some odd smells or flavors in your beer.

Oxy Clean Free

You will want to mix 1 tablespoon of this into a gallon of water. Again, once you mix this up you will use it the same way that you would normally sanitize. With this one, we would also recommend just giving everything a light rinse once you have covered them in the solution. The Oxy Clean Free has a similar chemical breakdown as our Mr. Beer No-Rinse Cleanser but since it is not Food Grade, we would suggest rinsing it just to be safe.

Hydrogen Peroxide

Another great substitute is Hydrogen Peroxide. This works very similarly to our No-Rinse Cleanser. You will want to make sure that the grade of peroxide is 3% or higher. This can be found at most drug stores. You don’t need to mix this with water or anything. Just get enough so you can sanitize all of your equipment. You will use this the same exact way that you use our No-rinse cleanser.

That covers all the replacement cleaners you can use just in case you don’t have any Mr. Beer No-Rinse Cleanser. If you brew a lot, I suggest stocking up on some of the cleansers, it never hurts to have a few extra. I think the easiest thing to do is just stock up on No-Rinse!

Cheers, 

Robert