Sterilizing the bottles
Here's another vote for using a dishwasher with an "anti-bacterial" cycle to sanitize your bottles.
First I rinse out each bottle thoroughly with the bottle-washer attachment on my kitchen sink. Then I place them in my dishwasher along with my five gallon bottling bucket. Most residential dishwashers in the US will have the capacity to fit the exact number of 22oz bottles (30 or so) plus bottling bucket (placed over a half dozen bottles). I need to remover the upper rack and place a "shower" attachment (that came with the dishwasher) over the pipe that would otherwise supply water to the upper rack arm. If you have lost your attachment, they are available cheaply. I am sure everything would work fine without the attachment, too.
I use no detergent, and don't worry that the water will not get inside each bottle. All I want is steam and heat to kill any bugs--I have already rinsed out the inside of each bottle with a 140 degree blast at the kitchen sink. If you doubt this method, toss your brew thermometer in the dishwasher. Mine registers over 170 degrees F at the end of the sanitize cycle. For comparison, FDA's new regulations for poultry recommend 165 degrees F to kill all the bugs in your average samonella infested chicken or turkey.
If you are a purist, you should remove the rinse agent from your dishwasher. This may interfere with the head on your beer. As a practical matter though, most homebrewers pour slow enough so that they never see a head anyway.
I have tried placing bottle caps in a basket during the sanitize cycle, but they always seem to rust on me for some reason. So I just either boil them, or use sanitizing solution, either of which is quite easy.
I leave the dishwasher sealed until I am ready to siphon from my fermenter to my bottling bucket. Once I am ready to bottle, I place all the bottles on the open door to my dishwasher, then bottle the beer. This way, all the inevitable slop and mess that comes with bottling is caught in the dishwasher door. When finished bottling, you can raise the door and all the beer runoff runs into the dishwasher.
After I have finished, I run both my 5 gallon plastic fermenter (when I am lazy, and not using my carboy) and bottling bucket through the dishwasher with the upper rack still removed. This time I use detergent. Once they are clean, I remove them (I will sanitize later), and replace the upper rack.
Using the dishwasher has taken much of the drudgery and mess out of bottling.
OK y'all. For "clean" bottles, all of your methods are good. Bleach, dishwashers, etc. They will all effectively sanitize the bottle. Some may say that the following is totally overkill, but for those that are paranoid that they haven't done enough to completely clean and "sterilize" their bottles:
If you really want bottles to be sterile, you need to either autoclave them or dry heat bake them. Guessing that most of you, unlike me, have no access to autoclaves here is how you can heat sterilize your bottles. No, I do not autoclave my beer bottles. I have also only done the following once when bottles were really gross, but otherwise hot soapy water, with good brush and shaking to rinse. Leave upside down in dishwasher to dry or on bottle rack. No problems to report.
DO NOT PUT CAPS OR SWING TOP PARTS IN THE OVEN!!! This is only for the glass bottles. no plastic, rubber or other things that will melt or catch fire!
DO NOT PUT COLD GLASS IN THE HOT OVEN
DO NOT PUT CAPPED GLASS IN THE OVEN (BOOM!!!) and a big powdery glass mess to boot
Stack bottles in oven on rack, much like laying them in the fridge on their sides to fit them in. Avoid touching the sides if possible and definately do NOT use the broiler element or contact the broiler element. Don't stack too high as the weight can smash the bottom bottles from high heat and weight. (2 layers is good) If you don't want to stack them, stand them up. nothing fancy here just make sure that when you close the oven door the bottles don't fall over.
You can leave some clean water in the bottles, this will evaporate and "steam" the inside of the bottles to aid in killing any funk. Please do not leave soapy residue in the bottles, yuck, or any cleaning solution double yuck.
Close door, turn oven ON to 325 F (with bottles already stacked inside). Once oven has reached 325 F set timer to 2 hours. Have a beer, play video games, take a nap, whatever.
When 2 hours is over, turn oven OFFand allow everything inside to cool to room temp. Or wait a while and handle with oven mits.
Should you not be bottling immediately, place little pieces of foil over the tops before you bake them. then they will remain clean and sterile inside for later use no matter where you leave them, like the garage. This is of course provided that he foil stay intact and on the top of the bottle.
If you loose a few bottles due to breakage, don't fret, buy a sixer at the store and add to the collection.
Again, this is overkill. Beware that some bottles may not be able to withstand the high heat. test a few first to make sure you aren't going to loose your investment, and make a mess in the oven beyond making lasagna.
Cheers!
Somebody mentioned Saniclean (non-foaming) and Star-san (foaming ) food grade acid based sanitizers are your friends and are available from many homebrew suppliers in concentrated form.
Once a carboy, or bottle, or keg, or racking hose, or anything is clean the above products will sanitize with 1-2 minutes contact time. I use the Star-san on everything except bottles. I just swish an ounce or so of the properly mixed amount around until all the surfaces are coated, then drain for 3-4 minutes to get most of the foam out , then immediately fill. Excess foam will not cause a problem with wort or finished beer.
For bottles I use the non foaming Saniclean and coat all inside surfaces and the neck of the bottle, drain for 3 minutes and then immediately fill. It is not necessary to rinse out any residual Saniclean. My buddy and I have done it this way for about 5 years and never had any infection problems. It is so much easier, quicker than using chlorine or boiling methods
dc wrote:
For bottles I use the non foaming Saniclean and coat all inside surfaces and the neck of the bottle, drain for 3 minutes and then immediately fill. It is not necessary to rinse out any residual Saniclean. My buddy and I have done it this way for about 5 years and never had any infection problems. It is so much easier, quicker than using chlorine or boiling methods
I too can vouch for Saniclean. I like how you don't need to stress over whether or not you've rinsed everything out of the bottle. I've only brewed 5 batches but every one has been contaminant free.
I'm also all for the wash and bake routine I find it much quicker and cheaper in the long run and 100% effective. Altho I bake mine 50 minutes at 370
I let the bottles soak for an hour or two in PBW to remove lables and clean them. Rinse them with hot tap water to get remove any glue residue that might still be there (usually none) and to rinse off the PBW. Then it's into a bucket full of Star-San for 30 seconds and on to the bottle tree until I'm ready for them. I don't have a dishwasher, so this seems to be the easiest way for me to get them cleaned and sanitized.
After I drink a bottle, I rinse it with a bottle washer to get the yeast residue out real good. Hot water does the trick with the bottle washer. Then when I want to use the bottles I sanitize for 2 minutes in Star San Iodophor solution. Real gunked up bottles go to recycle bin. I use sam adams bottles. Have enough for several batches.
DC
Anyone ever tried just boiling the bottles in water?
I use the 16oz grolsch style bottles and cleaning the caps and bottles separately is a pain. Over the years I have collected giant brew pots (I don't throw away old ones). So a couple hours prior to my bottling, I put about 11 - 12 grolsch bottles into each big pot (3 total), fill the bottles and pot with water, cover the pot with the top, and boil them on the stove for 15 minutes (15 minutes of actual boil time, it takes and extra 15 just to bring them to temperature). After they boil I pour the water out, put the top back on the pots, let them cool for an hour or so, and then fill them up with tasty beer. It's pretty much the same idea as sterlizing mason jars for canning.
I guess this method wouldn't be very easy if you didn't ever several large pots.
I always used the dishwasher method (regular run, even with a dishwasher tab) for roughly 50 clean bottles and that worked perfectly for dozens of batches. But I moved into a new house recently, without a dishwasher, and have to come up with a new method.
A local brewmaster advised, "just rinse them when you're done, soak them in a little sanitizer and set them upside down on the dishrack." I took his advice, but two batches in a row have been flat after weeks of sitting in the bottle. I can only think I hadn't rinsed them sufficiently and the sanitizer is inhibiting the yeast (bottle conditioning)? I was pretty thorough, but twice in a row speaks to a pattern that never existed before (with the dishwasher method). I used Straight-A cleanser, by the way. Beer tastes fine, but very minimal carbonation.
My third batch in the new house, I am trying the dry heat oven method (I've seen a variety of posts on the range of heat and time required). I would boil them as you do with canning, but with only 2 kettles it seems there would be too much water involved and too much process for a full 50 bottles, or even half that many 22 oz. bombers. My fingers are crossed that no bottles break. I'm thinking that 250 degrees for 1 hour should be sufficient?? That's about the same as the dishwasher cycle, right?
brew@home wrote:
I always used the dishwasher method (regular run, even with a dishwasher tab) for roughly 50 clean bottles and that worked perfectly for dozens of batches. But I moved into a new house recently, without a dishwasher, and have to come up with a new method.
A local brewmaster advised, "just rinse them when you're done, soak them in a little sanitizer and set them upside down on the dishrack." I took his advice, but two batches in a row have been flat after weeks of sitting in the bottle. I can only think I hadn't rinsed them sufficiently and the sanitizer is inhibiting the yeast (bottle conditioning)? I was pretty thorough, but twice in a row speaks to a pattern that never existed before (with the dishwasher method). I used Straight-A cleanser, by the way. Beer tastes fine, but very minimal carbonation.
My third batch in the new house, I am trying the dry heat oven method (I've seen a variety of posts on the range of heat and time required). I would boil them as you do with canning, but with only 2 kettles it seems there would be too much water involved and too much process for a full 50 bottles, or even half that many 22 oz. bombers. My fingers are crossed that no bottles break. I'm thinking that 250 degrees for 1 hour should be sufficient?? That's about the same as the dishwasher cycle, right?
A couple things.
1) flat beer has nothing to do with sanitizer unless you're leaving 1/4 bottle of samitizer in bottles when filling. Flat beer usually is from undercarbing, or sitting in secondary too long and no yeast ot react with priming sugar.
2) using a little more than one ounce of iodophor for 5 gallons of water and soaking the bottles in it for 2 minutes will be fine. I don't turn the bottles upside down. I just pour out the sanitizer and stand the bottles up in pans I use to hild bottles while filling. They don't have to air dry. Sanitizer moisture in the bottles will not prevent fermentation. I've been doing it this way for ten years and never had a problem.
DC
brew@home,
The heat profile in a dishwasher is very different than in an oven. Steam has a higher specific heat than air alone, meaning it can "carry" and transfer more heat. I, like you, have had great luck with just running my bottles in the dishwasher. I added oxyclean to my last run since I was using some bottles that have been hanging around for a while and I used the sanitizing rinse feature. I got lucky and moved into a house with a machine that is just that neat. As for the oven thing, I think your looking for more trouble and wasted energy than what it's worth. I agree with Deafcone that iodophor is great and will take care of your microbial concerns. Do make sure you are rinsing as you use bottles. I've discovered some scary things at the bottom of bottles that weren't rinsed and sat for a few months before being reused. Long and short, I would try using iodophor before messing with your oven. It's cheap, it's no rinse, and you pull a bottle directly from your tub/bucket/sink, fill it, and cap it. If you heat your bottles like that, they'll have to sit somewhere while they cool, and even if left in the oven they can be exposed to something undesireable since ovens will start to pull in air as they cool, not to mention the fact that repeated heating and cooling of beer bottles increases the risk of them breaking on you. I hope you found my view helpful.
Good Brewing,
Edds
I'd also like to point out that straight-A is not a sanitizer. It is a cleanser, so it's not killing any germs. So even if sanitizer could inhibit fermentation (which for bottleing purposes it won't) the straight-A wouldn't we the cuplrit.
Star-san and iodophor are both cheap, and are sanitizers. I personally use star-san.
As for why your beers aren't carbing, it's definately not your sanitation practices, so it must be something else.
Defcone is right about some of the causes, but there are more. Are you using enough priming sugar/DME in the first place? What temp are you leaving the bottles to carb at? If it's too cold it'll take longer to carb. Are you're caps on right? I've had bottles where the caps were on crooked or something, and the beer didn't fully carb.
I've been brewing for decades in a city that has good tap water. Over the years, I got lazier and lazier with sterilizing. In the end, all I did was boil a single kettle of water and splash that around my fermenter and other equipment. All I ever did to sterilize the bottles, which I always rinsed and drained carefully after using, was to since the out with hot water from the tap. I did this barehanded, but used water as hot as I could manage from the tap (I dunno how hot it comes out - maybe 70 degrees C?). You won't burn yourself at this temperature, unless you are careless.
Other brewers who I've mentioned this to either don't believe me or even get a little hostile about it, perhaps feeling that I was somehow mocking their careful efforts as sanitizing everything, but it's true. I did this for many years (at least 10) and maybe 60-80 batches, and I never once had even one single bottle that was infected. In all my years of brewing, I only had one batch that I would say failed (it tasted 'wrong' and the carbonation was more like that of soda, not beer). To this day I don't know what happened, but in any case, this happened in my first or second year, when I was still using chemical sterilizer!
I live in a developing country now (Vietnam), and I can't get hold of ingredients to brew (or glass bottles, or caps). Beer is also so cheap here, that I don't really need to make it! But of course I miss the taste and the fun, so I've just got a friend to bring me a couple of basic cans. The water here is not good though (you can't drink it from the tap because of the risk of Gardia), so I am using bottled water, and my bottle sterilization trick won't work here. Also, I'll be using plastic bottles, since I can't get caps or a capper.
Does anyone know of a generic type of sterilizer that I could find in a basic pharmacy? I can't get any brewing equipment here, so it has to be some general bleach or something that is easy to find anywhere.
There's always bleach, many still use it to this day, but there is the rinsing issue with using it. I like iodophor, and any agent that provides free iodine in the neighborhood of 2% should work. These chemicals should be readily available in a pharmacy. Possibly even betadine would work, even that would be an uber expensive solution. 70% isopropyl is always a popular sanitizer, but I'm not familiar with anyone using it for brewing equipment. Mr. micro (Brewski) probably has some more insight into this since he works the critters that we're trying to avoid. Those would be my thoughts though.
Cheers. Rinsing is a little bit of an extra issue for me I guess, since I have to use bottled water for everything I do. I checked out iodophor and it appears that rinsing isn't necessary (though when I did use chemical sanitizer I still used to give bottles at least a rudimentary rinse, whatever it said - Why not?)
Hopefully I can find iodophor somewhere here, otherwise I'll look for something else that has iodine and mix it to the strength you say..
Thanks edds
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