Equipment
Peracetic acid and other sanitisers
What sanitiser should be used on cider equipment?
In short
Peracetic acid is supplied as an equilibrium mixture of peracetic acid, hydrogen peroxide, acetic acid and water. It kills by oxidation, works quickly and works in cold water, and its breakdown products are things cider already contains.
It is used at a very high dilution from a concentrate, and at that use dilution many formulations are approved as no-rinse. The concentrate is corrosive and its vapour is an irritant.
No sanitiser is a substitute for cleaning. All of them are degraded by organic soil, and all of them assume a clean surface underneath.
Why peracetic acid is the industry default
It is fast, effective against yeasts, moulds and bacteria including the lactic and acetic organisms that matter in cider, and it works at ambient temperature, which saves the energy that a hot sanitisation would need. It is effective across a wide pH range and it does not leave a film.
Its breakdown products are the second reason. Peracetic acid decomposes to acetic acid, water and oxygen, so the residue at a use dilution is a trace of vinegar in a drink that already contains some. That is why it is accepted as a no-rinse sanitiser where the formulation and the jurisdiction allow it, and it removes the rinse step that would otherwise reintroduce whatever the water supply carries.
It is also unstable, which is a practical constraint rather than a defect. A made-up solution loses strength over hours to days depending on temperature, water quality and what it has been used on, so solutions are made fresh and their strength is checked with test strips or a titration rather than assumed from the dilution.
The alternatives
The chlorine row deserves emphasis in a cider context. Hypochlorite is cheap, familiar and widely used in domestic cleaning, and it is a poor choice in a cider house: it pits stainless steel, and chlorine reacting with phenolic material forms chlorophenols which micro-organisms convert to haloanisoles, the compounds behind musty taint. A cellar with a chlorine habit can develop a taint problem that survives long after the practice stops.
| Sanitiser | How it works | Strengths | Limitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peracetic acid | Oxidation | Fast, cold-water, no-rinse at use dilution, benign breakdown products | Corrosive concentrate; unstable in solution; irritant vapour |
| Acid-anionic (phosphoric acid with a surfactant) | Low pH plus surfactant disruption of cell membranes | Stable, leaves an acidic surface, also removes light scale | Foams, which is a problem in a circulating system; needs contact time |
| Iodophor | Iodine released from a carrier | Effective, low use concentration | Stains plastic; can taint at higher concentrations; sensitive to temperature |
| Chlorine-based (hypochlorite, chlorine dioxide) | Oxidation | Cheap and effective | Corrodes stainless; a documented route to chlorophenol and haloanisole taint; must never contact acid |
| Hot water and steam | Thermal destruction | No chemical residue at all | Energy-hungry; needs a defined temperature held for a defined time to mean anything; thermal stress on vessels |
| Ozone | Oxidation by dissolved ozone gas | Leaves nothing but oxygen; effective cold | Generator required; ozone gas is toxic to breathe; corrodes some materials |
Handling peracetic acid
Getting a sanitiser to work
- Clean first. Every sanitiser in the table is consumed by organic soil.
- Wet every surface. A sanitiser only sanitises what it touches, which means filling, circulating or spraying to full coverage rather than swirling a little in the bottom.
- Give it the contact time the label specifies. Pouring it in and pouring it straight out is the commonest way to achieve nothing.
- Check the strength of made-up solutions rather than trusting the dilution, particularly for peracetic acid.
- Use it on a surface that can be sanitised. Wood, scratched plastic and a fitting that does not drain will not be sanitised by anything.
- Do not mix products, ever, including "just to be sure".
Also answered on this page
Questions this page covers, so you can tell at a glance whether it is the one you want.
- Is peracetic acid safe for cider equipment?
- Do I need to rinse after sanitising?
- Can I use bleach as a sanitiser for cider?
Related
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- Why does everyone say cleaning matters more than anything else — Cleaning removes soil — pomace, lees, tartrate, protein and the biofilm growing in it. Sanitising reduces the number of viable organisms on a surface that is already clean. They are two separate operations and the second does not work without the first.
- How do i sterilise cider bottles — Wash them clean first, then sanitise with a no-rinse sanitiser or a sulphite solution, and fill while still wet with it. Bottles that look clean but have dried deposits inside are the usual source of bottle spoilage.
- How much acetic acid is normal in cider — A small amount is present in every cider and contributes lift. Sound Asturian sidra natural has been measured at 0.2 to 0.3 g/L, and a clean modern cider much above about 0.7 g/L is generally showing a fault rather than a style.
- What do caustic and acid cleaners actually do, and how are they handled
- What is cork taint — Cork taint is a musty, damp-cardboard smell caused mainly by trichloroanisole, which can come from the cork or from the cellar. It strips aroma from the drink even below the level at which it can be identified.
- What is the white film on top of my cider — A dull white or grey skin is film yeast growing on the surface where the cider meets air. It is not mould, and it is a warning that the vessel is not full or not sealed.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
Cider and perry production technical training material
Peter Mitchell / Cider and Perry Academy · reference work · registered as competent for this subject
Searched again on 2026-08-25 and it remains the one printed source here that a bibliographic check cannot fix, because it is not a published work with an edition. It is course material issued to participants of a training programme, so there is no catalogue record to verify, no ISBN, and no lawful public copy. Its state stays `registered` for that reason rather than through inattention.
Hochschule Geisenheim University — beverage technology
Hochschule Geisenheim · university · retrieved 2026-08-24
German beverage-technology research covering apple wine and fruit juice processing, including the enzymology of clarification.
The Science of Cidermaking and associated technical writing
Andrew Lea · reference work · passage verified 2026-08-24
Written by a food chemist who worked at Long Ashton on apple phenolics. Unusual among specialist cider writing in that it is primary-research-adjacent: the author is describing work he did, and cites the literature. This is why it is registered at tier 1 for chemistry while a general cider book is not.
Where to go next
- Cider making equipment — The rest of the equipment material, grouped by what each piece is for.
- How cider is made — The methods this equipment exists to carry out.
- Troubleshooting — The faults that are traced back to equipment and to cleaning.