Steeping Bag, preferred cleaning method? Options

[SDMike]

Hey, fellas. First time homebrewer as of this weekend. My Irish Stout is now fermenting, but I was having trouble cleaning my steeping bag as thoroughly as I would have liked.

Was wondering what method you used for cleaning the steeping bag to get all the junk out?

Thanks in advance,

San Diego Mike

[Felix]

Howdy, Mike. Welcome to brewing! The brews at your fingertips are begging to be liberated into your kegs!!!

I wouldn't bother with trying to wash it, just toss it, they're pretty cheap. But if you're looking for something reuseable, I would go with the tide® laundry bags. I used a couple for a while, and was able to get them pretty clean. Just be careful with the detergent.

Good luck, and happy sparging!

[Joab]

Welcome Mike, to both the Green board and home brewing! I buy new hop bags for each batch because they are only $.30 each. I do have one nice mesh bag that I've re-used and the way I cleaned it was to turn it inside out, shake it real well outdoors and then rinse it real well with warm water. Once it dries shake it and rinse it again.

[Dave F]

I have 1 nylon bag that I use for fruit and oak chips...when I pull it out of a brew, I just rinse the crap out of it with water as hot as I can stand, and go over the nooks and crannies to get any visible pieces of stuff out. I then soak in starsan or other sanitizer. I resoak in sanitizer when I go to use it...come to think of it, I'm wondering if I shouldn't just boil it just to make sure I'm really getting it good...you never can tell what might be lurking in the corners that is hard to rinse/scrub out, and you can't sanitize what you can't clean...
Oh, and I had also been thinking that I might just switch to chuckable muslin bags...cheap and easy...I would be worried that with some fruits like strawberries that the small seeds might get out of the bag and be a nuisance.

[Marvin]

I used to use the nylon bags to steep and figure a good rinse was good enough since the wort was boiled after the steeping.

[dmtaylor]

Warm water, turn inside out, warm water again. Don't worry about staining. My bags all turn dark brown after brewing a porter or two. After they get too nasty, just throw them out. But I've reused mine for dozens of batches, with no problems. They don't need to be sanitized, just rinsed off.

[Dave F]

Warm water, turn inside out, warm water again. Don't worry about staining. My bags all turn dark brown after brewing a porter or two. After they get too nasty, just throw them out. But I've reused mine for dozens of batches, with no problems. They don't need to be sanitized, just rinsed off.

This is a good point...I might have missed the issue as I was using my nylon bags in secondary for other additions, but I'd agree that if you are using it to put something in the boil (or for steeping grains before the boil), there's no need to sterilize, the boil would certainly do that for you...
Still, I've gone to letting stuff "go commando" in the boil recently, and then rough filtering on the back end after cooling/going into primary, and I've been more happy with that technique...better hop utilization, etc.

This post has been edited by Dave F: Nov 19 2009, 01:58 PM

[tctruffin]

I have a nylon grain bag. I rinse off both sides as mentioned above and toss it in the dryer on the air only option (no heat). This gets all the tiny grain flakes off easily.

Also, +1 on not worrying about the discoloration.