Sanitizing solution with campden

Yes, you can re-use your sanitizing solution IF you only use it on clean equipment. So, you can rinse a clean bottle out, and put the sanitizer back in its container. But, if you rinse out something that is soiled or contaminated, it is not recommended to recycle that bit of sanitizer.

That's a lot of sanitizer to make at one time. You don't really want that much headroom in the container, or the fumes will not be pleasant when you open it. And it will lose strength EVERY time you open the container. So, unless you are going to use that much in a very short time, you should make less.

I make about 100 gallons of wine each year, and I sanitize everything: work table surfaces, primaries, carboys, bottles, destemmer and crusher. I keep a ONE-gallon container of sanitizing solution, and top it up when it gets 1 or 2 cups low. That amount should be more than sufficient for home use.

There are different opinions as to how strong the santizing solution should be. You would need somewhere between 50 and 150 tablets, depending which one you adopted.

More is NOT necessarily better. At some stage the solution will be so strong as to be dangerous, it will be ineffective for the purpose, and it will leave large salt deposits on the surfaces to which it has been applied.

Campden tablets are a convenient means of sulphiting the must with small batches of wine. One tablet per gallon provides 50 ppm SO2. But the tablets must be crushed thoroughly to disolve properly. And they are considerably more expensive than the alternatives.

If you are doing any serious amount of winemaking, you should obtain potassium or sodium metabisulphite powder or crystals, and make a 10% solution (25 grams per 250 ml cup of water). Make up about a pint, and put it in a tightly sealed DARK container (light will cause it to deteriorate). Then you can use 1 tsp. of solution in place of one campden tablet.

For a sterilizer, use 1/2 tsp. metabisulphite + 1/2 tsp. citric acid per 250 ml. "cup" of water. Another common formula is 2 oz. sodium metabisulphite per gallon of water. The exact amount isn't important in a sanitizer. As stated above, a gallon kept topped up, should be more than enough.

Sodium metabisulphite is about half the price of potassium metabisulpite, and perfectly adequate as a sanitizer. But it is probably better to use potassium metabisulphite IN the wine. Commercial wineries are not allowed to use the Sodium metabisulphite, and it can leave a bitter taste in your wine even if sodium isn't the evil susbtance current medical "science" claims).

It is MUCH cheaper to use metabisulfite powder or crystals than Campden tablets. Grape&Granary sells Potassium Metabisulfite for $3.99 per pound, and Sodium Metabisulfite for $2.19.

And the thought of crushing 150 tablets ....

Okay.. looks like I need to order some meta before long.. I'm just getting into this (finally got everything together for my first batch). Ordered campden, not meta... But, I did get the potasium campden, not the sodium...

Is there anywhere else to find potasium metasulfite other then in a wine/beer shop??

email: daveallyn at bwsys dot net please respond in this NG so others can share your wisdom as well!

I think all campden tablets are made with potassium meta now-a-days. They are used in canning foods, and sodium has had an (undeserved) bad rap for some time now.

By all means, use up your campden tablets. You've already paid for them. :)

BTW, you can purchase smaller quantities of the powder/crystals for less money. I just mentioned the prices of the one pound packages so you could see how inexpensive it is compared to the tablets.

Not that I know of. Outside of beer and wine making, it is used in the food industry, but they purchase it in large quantities directly from chemical manufacturers. Before I discovered Presque Isle and Grape&Granary, I contacted one of them to see if I could purchase a pound of food-grade meta from them. They wanted over $120 per pound! Plus shipping!

Several chemical suppliers sell food grade potassium metabisulfite. Prices run about $60 per 25 kilogram bag. lum

Is there anything wrong with useing a plastic gallon jug for the storage? I know not to use for a secondary, but can I go to the store, get a gallon of distilled water, crush up 50tablets or so, shake it up real good, and use that???

email: daveallyn at bwsys dot net please respond in this NG so others can share your wisdom as well!

Dave, since you ask this question earlier, I assume there is no homebrew shop in your "neighborhood". You can order from the two I mentioned earlier over the Internet, over the telephone, or by mail order: Presque Isle is at

Grape&Granary is at Their prices on these items are very low, and shipping will be about $7, perhaps less if you call them on the phone and ask them to send it by priority mail instead of UPS.

I hope there's nothing wrong with it, for that's precisely what I do! I use a one-gallon plastic cannister with a wide-mouth screw-top lid, that I got from the dollar store (for $1).

That having been said, there's plastic and there's plastic. Stick to white HDPE plastic if possible (it will be stamped HDPE with a "2" in a recycling triangle, on the bottom). Some translucent PPE plastics are ok as well. If it is sold for use with food, it is probably ok to use for this purpose.

An empty (and thoroughly rinsed out) bleach bottle would work well, however there is an advantage to using a wide-mouth bottle if you can find one, because you can dip and soak things in it (e.g. corks, racking canes, siphon tubing, etc.)

The distilled water bottle will work as well, but ... it isn't wide mouth, it isn't opaque (and exposure to light will shorten the life of your sterilizer), and the dw bottles aren't very sturdy. Since the only thing in them is inexpensive and relatively non-destructive water, they use very thin plastic with cheap seam welds. I used to store water in them to keep in the back of my truck, but too many of them split open at the seam. Now I use empty bleach bottles, which are much sturdier because of the corrosive chemical content.

When you crush up your campden tablets, you should mix them with warm water and stir, rather than shake. That will do a better job of mixing.