1st bottle day

Im just about ready to bottle my 1st beer(blonde ale). i sanitized with star san and left bottles on tree wednesday night. i planned to bottle tonight(friday) but it looks like im not going to have time until sunday. do i need to sanitize my bottles again? i was thinking they should be good for a week anyway right?

Um. No.

They're only sanitary while still wet from the star San.

But in theory they were sanitary when put on the rack, and they remained upside down which would prevent any contaminates from falling into them they could still be sanitary correct?


In any case, it takes a few minutes to sanitize the bottles again, and is well worth knowing for sure that they're sanitized. A helpful hint, I make a few gallons of starsan up at a time and leave it in an old bucket fermenter. Whenever it's time to bottle, I just toss a bunch of bottles in the bucket, and pull them out as needed.

I agree. It's too easy to resanitize.Why chance it?

Theoretically you should be fine, but as this stage it really isn't worth chancing. You've come this far, why chance it?

ok. no worries. i can sanitize again. its easy enough especially with a vinator. i was just hoping to not repeat a step.

Yes, you should always sanitize fresh. Most of the sanitizers we use are No rinse/wet contact sanitizers. They are literally double edged swords. They kill two ways. They kill everything on the object prior to sanitizing, and then as long as they are still wet they form a sanitizer barrier that kills everything that comes into contact with object.

If you let the sanitizer dry any micro organism that comes in contact with the sanitized object, rather than being killed by it, makes the object no longer sanitzed.

If you let it dry you are reducing it's efficacy by 50%

I think you should always sanitize fresh. And on bottling day it doesn't take more than 10 minutes to sanitize them with my vinator. If you look at the system for bottling I share in the bottling sticky, the whole process takes no more than an hour.