New Brewer Looking for Bottle Cleaning Advice

Title says it all. I'm looking for the best way to clean bottles in preparation for my first brew leaving the secondary (hopefully by Friday). I was planning on soaking in diversol solution, rinsing, and sanitizing in the dishwasher/using sodium metabisulfite afterward. Any thoughts or anything more thorough?

Ammonia (diluted w/water) works great for removing old labels - I soak overnight, most of the labels are floating the next day. A green scrubby removes the glue.

If you have deposits/junk/mold inside bottles, some sort of oxidizing cleaner - like PBW or Oxyclean. I've used oxyclean with great results - using warm water, then soaking overnight works great. I rarely even need a bottle brush. Don't soak for more than a day or two though - puts a nasty film on bottles. And rinse REALLY well or you'll have oxyclean-flavored beer. Nasty.

Once clean, just sanitize with Star San. Some do the heat cycle on the dishwasher (no soap) with great results. Never tried Sodium Meta, but I guess it'd work fine.

Most of us use an overnight soak of oxyclean and hot water to both clean and let labels come of effortless. Then a rinse and a soak in a weak acid like dilluted starsan, or either vengar and water or lemon juice and water, then sanitize as normal.

I've never tried either of the methods mentioned but thought I would throw my method in the mix. 1) HOT PBW for about 2 hours. 2) Rinse with hot water 3) run in dish washer on high heat or Pots/Pans setting 4) Put all the bottles in sanitizing solution and pull out as needed durning filling. Don't forget to sanitize the bottle caps too.

I neglected to mention that I don't take issue with the previous posts I just haven't used ammonia or viniger when bottling.

My process is very similar. Soak in oxyclean for an hour or two, then run them through the dishwasher on the "sanitize" cycle. If I don't use them immediately, then I soak them in stars an for a couple minutes the next bottling day.

Oh, and always rinse your bottles immediately after drinking the last of the beer in them. Makes cleaning much easier.

xeerohour said:

Oh, and always rinse your bottles immediately after drinking the last of the beer in them. Makes cleaning much easier.

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So true. Just did my first batch and I soaked in the Walmart version of Oxiclean and ran throw the dishwasher. I paid the price for not sufficiently rinsing the bottles. Took a long time with a bottle brush but live and learn.

I recommend Sun oxygen cleaner from good old Walmart. It was $2 for a medium tub of the stuff and I put 5 scoops in a 10 gal bucket and let the. Soak for 3 hours. Every single label fell right off!

I go dumpster diving in the glass recycling for my bottles. Have access to a militarily post so TONS of bottles. Usually soak them overnight in a five gallon bucket with some bleach(about a cap to a gallon). I'm new to brewing too but I use to be a chef and if there is one thing I learned it's Bleach water will kill anything.

Hot OxyClean (Sodium Percarbonate), labels float right off, then a rinse in weak citric acid solution and into the storage box. I santize with StarSan before bottling.

Back in the day I would soak my bottles in my bath tub with bleach water and then clean them the next day. The labels would fall off.

Nowadays I will be using the sun oxy cleaner (oxyclean ripoff) instead of bleach. Since the bathtub is not used by anyone, it will be easy to keep sanitized.

Also, an obviously simple suggestion: rinse your commercial beer bottles after you drink them and the mold won't be an issue.

BlainD said:

I go dumpster diving in the glass recycling for my bottles. Have access to a militarily post so TONS of bottles.

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I was just at my dump yesterday and was amazed at the types of bottles that are discarded. You could probably find any type of bottle you were looking for there for free!