Sterilizing bottles and saving them for later?

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thrstyunderwater

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I've read/been told that you can sterilize a bottle with your preferred method and then put a piece of foil over the mouth and sit on it forever. Whenever it's time to bottle just take the foil off and fill it up. Easy as that.

Anyone do this and is it a bad idea?
 
I have also heard this. I am curious to see what kind of responses you get. It sure would make bottling day easier.
 
I believe it is considered advisable to sanitize on bottling day. I try to keep my bottles clean after use then just a quick spray with Star San at bottling.
 
Sanitizing and sterilizing are two separate things. Sterilizing is more intense than sanitizing. Palmer mentions in his book that lots of people (like myself) bake their bottles in the oven and use tin foil on the tops. This is sterilization, not sanitation.

As long as the tin foil is secure your bottles will be sterile (indefinitely) for bottling day.
 
I dump a load of bottles into the bottling bucket filled with starsan, let them sit for a while while I do something else (watch TV, do some homework) and then dump out teh starsan and wrap the top in foil, then store them upside down. If the top is tightly wrapped when wet, I don't see where bacteria would be getting in.

I have been doing it the night before bottling.
 
First, it's probably a good thing to distinguish between sanitizing an sterilizing. We're not sterilizing in homebrewing, we're sanitizing...which is much easier.
The most commonly used sanitizing agents are bleach, iodophor, and Star San. I use Star San.
Sanitizing bottles very far in advance is probably inadvisable, as the bottles may become contaminated, despite the homebrewer's best efforts.
I sanitize the day before I bottle. My process is twofold:

1. I squirt Star San solution up into each bottle with a vinator (a pump designed to spray sanitizer up into wine bottles; this is a great little piece of equipment, and I wouldn't be without it).

2. As I spray the Star San into each bottle, the bottle is placed upside down in the dishwasher and left there overnight. When I get up in the mornign, I run the dishwasher, which sanitizes the outside of the bottles. By the time I'm ready to bottle, the bottles are ready to go.

There are many ways of doing this process, I was just looking for a simple and effective method. This works for me.

Note: My process requires no cleaning (different from sanitizing) of the bottles, because all my bottles are rinsed thoroughly at the time the beer is poured. If the residues and sediment of the beer is allowed to dry in the bottle, then a completely separate cleaning process needs to be employed, either using brushes and cleaner, or soaking in a product like PBW or Oxi-Clean, followed by a thorough rinse.
 

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