Best Method to Sanitize Bottles

For years I have done the standard sanitizer and soaked the bottles for disinfecting with no ill effects. My Bro in Law just told me he runs them thru a cycle in the dishwasher and this is sufficient. He claims to have done this exclusively for years with no problems in the final stage. Does anyone else do this or heard of this technique? Just wondering.

I do this for all my batches and it has worked well and I believe it's faster and more convenient. Two things: 1) It's not good for cleaning, just sanitizing - and leave out any detergent or drying agent. 2) I think for this to work reliably, you need to have a hot sanitize setting on your dishwasher. There are definitely threads on here that discuss the pros and cons.

My dishwasher has a "sanitize" cycle on it and I have used that for every batch of beer that I have bottled so far with no problems. That is the only way that I have ever sanitized my bottles. You have to make sure they are good and clean on the inside before running them through the cycle and also don't use any kind of detergent. Just put them in and run them with water only.

I got one of those "Vignators" and it works really well with the way I do it..

Vinator and starsan. i can sanitize bottles faster than I can load and un-load the dishwasher

When I had a dishwasher and used Iodophor for everything else (yeah, a long time ago and before Star-San), I ran a load (it just about exactly fit 5G worth of bottles) to clean with detergent, then a separate rinse load with a heated drying cycle which got them too hot to touch. I let the load cool for a bit, and then bottled right out of the dishwasher, with any spills going onto the open door. It was actually very convenient and low-mess.

Now I've got the ease of a Star-San spray bottle, but first have to deal with the mess of cleaning bottles by hand in a soaker pot and finding a way to lean them upside down on towels to drain with no rack. PITA, and very messy. That's why only my annual meads get bottled, anymore.

Yep.. hot dishwasher with NO soap is fine. Just use the "hot wash" and "hot dry" setting.

As the others said... just make sure the bottles are clean.

Really, all I do is rinse a bottle with hot water immediately after pouring the beer into a glass, then put it upside down in a case to dry. They can sit there for weeks inverted (no dust can enter). Then I throw them all in the washer when it's time to bottle a batch. Pull the bottles straight out of the washer to fill (let 'em cool a bit). easy.

finish beer, rinse with carboy/bottle jet washer(amazing tool. very affordable). bottling day, no soap dishwasher. cool (in dishwasher) and fill. repeat.

it really is that easy

Dishwasher will do great. Just make sure it's not using a rinse agent like jet dry. I've used the dishwasher in the past as well as bleach water without any infected beer. This time I'm using Starsan. Just dunk, drain and fill. No rinsing.

I used to use the dishwasher. Now, vinator and starsan.

gingerdawg said:

Vinator and starsan. i can sanitize bottles faster than I can load and un-load the dishwasher

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Same here. I don't trust my glasses to the dishwasher, so the bottles ain't going in there either.

I don't have a bottle tree unfortunately, but it would be kind of awkward given the varieties in bottles and bottle sizes I have. Generally, until I have a small pile of bottles sitting by my sink, I will just keep them closed with their flip tops. When I clean and sanitize, I do the following:

1) Use a bottle washer in the sink to spray hot water inside the bottle (clean up leftover residue and yeast)

2) Sanitize with Starsan using a Vinator. For flip top bottles, the cap will be dipped into the sanitizer with the tip of the bottle before blasting sanitizer inside.

3) Drain most of the sanitizer from the bottle, but will flip the cap back on or re-cap the bottle depending on the bottle style. This will leave a bit of sanitizer in the bottle.

Generally before bottling beer, I will shake the bottle up a bit to mix the leftover sanitizer around to coat the inside of the bottle, uncap it, dump the leftover sanitizer then fill the bottle with beer.

This method has worked well for me, and I don't have to necessarily invest in a bottle tree to keep the bottles dry as they essentially stay perpetually sanitized even upright and wet. The fact that I will use bottle caps on a bottle when empty to me is a non issue because 95% of my bottles are flip tops anyways.

dishwarsher FTW!

I feel like I went totally overboard with my first bottling session. I soaked all my bottles in oxyclean to get rid of the labels. I used too much of it so there was some undisolved white stuff in every bottle. Next I used a sponge to wipe off excess glue from the outside of the bottles. Afterwards came the jet washer to clean out the inside of the bottles. The night before bottling I loaded my bottles into the dishwasher and ran it on the sanitize setting without soap. On bottling day I used the vinator to rinse the inside of the bottles with an iodophore solution. Since they smelled funny, I rinsed them again with cool boiled water. I feel like I spent 5 hours in the kitchen that day. I really need to optimize my process.

Pixalated said:

I feel like I went totally overboard with my first bottling session.

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Do you still have fingerprints?

Pixalated said:

I feel like I went totally overboard with my first bottling session. I soaked all my bottles in oxyclean to get rid of the labels. I used too much of it so there was some undisolved white stuff in every bottle. Next I used a sponge to wipe off excess glue from the outside of the bottles. Afterwards came the jet washer to clean out the inside of the bottles. The night before bottling I loaded my bottles into the dishwasher and ran it on the sanitize setting without soap. On bottling day I used the vinator to rinse the inside of the bottles with an iodophore solution. Since they smelled funny, I rinsed them again with cool boiled water. I feel like I spent 5 hours in the kitchen that day. I really need to optimize my process.

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You're only OC if you did each step three times and counted each step for each bottle.

catdaddy66 said:

For years I have done the standard sanitizer and soaked the bottles for disinfecting with no ill effects. My Bro in Law just told me he runs them thru a cycle in the dishwasher and this is sufficient. He claims to have done this exclusively for years with no problems in the final stage. Does anyone else do this or heard of this technique? Just wondering.

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I did the dishwasher for my first 10 or so batches. It worked, but I've switched to the vinator/starsan/bottle tree.

Reasons:
1. My dishwasher didn't have a sanitize function. I wasn't confident that the temp was high enough.
2. Dishwasher took a while...maybe 1 hr or 1.5 hours. I would have to plan bottling in advance.
3. Dishwasher uses a decent amount of energy.
4. I felt like I was confined to bottling in my kitchen since I used the dishwasher as the bottle tree.

The reasons for the vinator/starsan/bottle tree are pretty much the opposite of above: I'm confident in starsan's sanitizing, sanitizing takes a few minutes and then I'm ready to bottle, no electricity waste, and I can bottle in my garage/basement now.

Those of you using a vinator, how many sprays per bottle do you do? I must spray each bottle for 30-45 seconds. Am I overdoing it?

Pixalated said:

Those of you using a vinator, how many sprays per bottle do you do? I must spray each bottle for 30-45 seconds. Am I overdoing it?

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yes.

Pixalated said:

Those of you using a vinator, how many sprays per bottle do you do? I must spray each bottle for 30-45 seconds. Am I overdoing it?

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You're overdoing it. The bottles should be clean before sanitizing. Star-san is a wet contact sanitizer, so you only need to get them wet inside. 4-5 squirts is plenty. 1 to get them wet, 3-4 more to make you feel good about it.

I make SWMBO do it. Done. Easy. No fuse.

Once your bottles are clean, the only thing that needs to be done is a rinse when you empty them and sanitize just before bottling. I store mine upside down in a milk crate after rinsing so I don't have to worry about dust, etc. One shot with starsan from the vinator, a little wipe of the mouth and upside down to drain in a pegged restaurant dishrack.
Most people spend way too much time with way too many steps and worry way too much.
Using detergents will result in a film inside your bottle. Bottling beer will result in a film inside your bottle. Washing and heat drying with the dishwasher in many locales will result in calcium deposits on the inside of your bottle which will not be easy to remove. Not to mention wasting a ton of water and energy and likely depositing soil from deep inside the machine. But I am sure that those of you who spend that much time on your bottles spend an equal amount of time dismantling, cleaning, and sanitizing your dishmachine before you even think about putting your bottles in it .

catdaddy66 said:

For years I have done the standard sanitizer and soaked the bottles for disinfecting with no ill effects. My Bro in Law just told me he runs them thru a cycle in the dishwasher and this is sufficient. He claims to have done this exclusively for years with no problems in the final stage. Does anyone else do this or heard of this technique? Just wondering.

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Yes, I have a steam sanitize cycle and I use it. I then load the bottles on a bottle tree and use a vinator with Saniclean right before bottling. This is as long as the bottle was rinsed clean after use.

The steam cycle, coupled with a high temp wash cycle will kill pretty much anything on an already clean bottle. The vinator is so easy to use, I go ahead and do it anyway.

I was going to give the dishwasher a try today, but the dirty dishes were still in it. I'd have had to run the cycle, about an hour, unload the dishwasher, reload with bottles, run again.

Meanwhile I have a 5 gallon carboy filled with starsan solution and a jet washer already on the sink. I didn't even consider waiting. I was done in 45 minutes with all the cleaning/sanitizing. I had a little helper too. (not so little I guess at 14 now).

And the dirty dishes are still in the dishwasher.

One really cool thing happened today too. I was down in my basement getting bottles which had been sitting for over a year since my last batch, and I found an unopened bottle of wheat beer that I made. I thought I was long ago out of homebrew.

catdaddy66 said:

For years I have done the standard sanitizer and soaked the bottles for disinfecting with no ill effects. My Bro in Law just told me he runs them thru a cycle in the dishwasher and this is sufficient. He claims to have done this exclusively for years with no problems in the final stage. Does anyone else do this or heard of this technique? Just wondering.

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I just run bottles through my dishwasher with some regular Oxi Clean. (no starsan, no iodophor)

I am too cheap to spend money on bottles trees or vinators, so I never bought them.

A few times I added another step, just dipping the bottles in weak iodophor solution and letting them drain in the dishwasher.

Feeling this too tedious, I am now back to the oxiclean/dishwasher method when I bottle.

Only ever lost 2 bottles due to infection.

First thing is that I make sure the bottles are rinsed right after they are used. Then I let them air dry upside down for a few hours. I then store them upside down in 12 pack cardboard containers.

On bottling day I rinse them well with a jet washer attached to my bathroom faucet:



Then I give them a 3-4 pumps on the vinator filled with Iodophor:



From there I let them sit on the bottle tree until I bottle:



This system works very well and I don't worry about scrubbing or cleaning them unless I obtain bottles that weren't rinsed right away or need an oxyclean soak to remove labels. I've never had a bad bottle this way.

sudsmcgee said:

First thing is that I make sure the bottles are rinsed right after they are used. Then I let them air dry upside down for a few hours. I then store them upside down in 12 pack cardboard containers.

On bottling day I rinse them well with a jet washer attached to my bathroom faucet:

Then I give them a 3-4 pumps on the vinator filled with Iodophor:

From there I let them sit on the bottle tree until I bottle:

This system works very well and I don't worry about scrubbing or cleaning them unless I obtain bottles that weren't rinsed right away or need an oxyclean soak to remove labels. I've never had a bad bottle this way.

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Preach it.

+10000!! ^