Cleaning Your Cave

[Al Lewis]

For those of you with small fridge or wine cooler caves how often do you clean them and with what? I emptied mine last weekend and thoroughly dried off the coils in the shelves and cleaned every surface with a spray of warm water mixed with a little chlorine bleach.  Figured that would keep down any molds that might try to take up residence.

[Tomer1]

Elbow grees is a good cleaning method so you remove any biofilm and preper the surface for a sanitizer (such as bleach or one of the no rise solutions).

I often satinize after making blue cheese as these seem to contaminate other cheeses despite being in their own "micro caves".

[shotski]

good question Al. I make wine as well and was wondering if a potassium met bisulphite solution ( a contact sterilizer ) would work.


john

[Al Lewis]

I couldn't begin to advise you on that but I'm sure there are some here that can.    I do know that chlorine bleach kills all funguses, etc.

[John@PC]

What kind of cave to you have Al?  Frost-free, exposed coil or wine cooler?  I upgraded from a exposed coil (i.e. dorm fridge) to a used frost free but immediately started having problems.  I had to pull out the freezer panels and found a lot of grunge.  Cleaned with a pine-oil cleaner / water solution followed by a water / bleach spray and it seemed to do the trick.