Homemade enzymatic cleaner recipes have pluses and minuses.  Know these seven things, before you mix!

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I have spent HOURS on the this database researching all of the possible chemical formulations of citrus cleaner and this what I found.

Enzymatic Cleaner: The usual formula

1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon yeast
1 liter Water
2 cups Lemon and/or Orange Scraps

Mix and ferment for a month.  Strain into bottle and use.

Good News: It does clean things

1. DIY “enzymatic cleaner” has a high alcohol content, like many commercial cleaners.
Sugar plus water and yeast makes BOOZE.  The yeast eats up the sugars (wouldn’t want a sticky spray, right?) and converts it into alcohol.  Alcohol is a good cleaner.  If you put in all those fruit peelings and juices, you then have citrus booze.

2. Citrus peels contain “terpenes” and are used in many commercial cleaners.  
Think turpentine. If enough of the citrus terpenes end up in the final solution, it should have some decent grease cutting ability.  How much is in there?  I don’t know, but given that these are also responsible for the scent of the citrus fruit, I would assume that if you can smell it in your spray, then it’s there and helping you clean.

Bad news:  You aren’t making fruit enzymes.

3. Enzymes come from living cells.
Commercial enzymatic cleaners usually come from two places: Bacillus Subtilis (bacteria, not present in or ON common grocery store fruits) or a fruit containing protease (ONLY pineapple, papaya, and kiwi.)  Once the organism is done growing, you have all the enzyme you’re going to get out of it.  You can’t GROW more fruit enzymes by fermentation.  The only enzymes you are growing are in the LIVE yeast.

4.  NO commercial enzymatic cleaner uses yeast enzymes.
No one sprays “yeast water” on their counters, as far as I know.  The only useful yeast enzymes make the conversion of sugar to alcohol, which is how you get the “sticky” out of your spray before you use it.

5. NO commercial enzymatic cleaner uses citrus enzymes.
There’s no useful enzymes for cleaning in citrus fruit.  (As mentioned above, there are other useful things, but they aren’t enzymes.) Commercial producers, if they use fruit, only use pineapple (most common), papaya, and kiwi extracts.  THESE ARE THE ONLY FRUITS WITH PROTEIN ENZYMES.  And there’s NO fermentation to generate more.  Once you cut up the fruit, it’s done.

Good News: You can make it enzymatic

6.  Extracting pure enzymes is tricky.
If you grow some Bacillus Subtillus, you can just pop it in your handy centrifuge and use top liquid in your cleaners.  If you don’t have that strain of bacteria laying around and you’ve misplaced your centrifuge…well, you get the point.  And getting the pure enzyme out of the pineapple cells without destroying the enzyme is a series of chemical and physical extraction processes.

7.  But it still might work for pineapple peels.
Fresh pineapple ruins your jello because of the high protein enzyme content of that fruit.  I would think if you blended and pressed your pineapple, the cleaner might contain some protease in the end just from the cells floating around in the liquid, but you’re NOT growing more. Just getting some of what was in the pineapple before it stopped growing.  But, how much is in there?  I don’t know.  The best way to test that is to whip up a batch of this stuff and stick it in a tester container of jello.  If the resulting liquid keeps the jello from setting, then you’ve got protease in there and it will help you clean.

But, unless you eat enough raw pineapple or papaya to make this reasonable for your family, it’s just easier to get a cheapo bottle of Meat Tenderizer.  It’s usually just pineapple bromelain.

Conclusion:

This recipe will make a decent cleaner, but not because of enzymes.  It’s the alcohol and the citrus terpenes (grease cutters).  
If you want to have enzymes in it, you can try adding ground pineapple, papaya, or kiwi peels and checking the resulting fermented liquid in jello.