Home made bottle tree, risk of infection?

My neighbor was nice enough to try making me a "bottle tree" since drying bottles is a pain in the @$$ without one. It's pretty ghetto but works.

It is basically a few 2x4s with a bunch of dowels sticking out of them. I would love to use these but am totally paranoid about infecting my brew, especially at the last stage of the process.

Can I use these? Anything I should do to prevent infection if possible?

aeonderdonk said:

My neighbor was nice enough to try making me a "bottle tree" since drying bottles is a pain in the @$$ without one. It's pretty ghetto but works.

It is basically a few 2x4s with a bunch of dowels sticking out of them. I would love to use these but am totally paranoid about infecting my brew, especially at the last stage of the process.

Can I use these? Anything I should do to prevent infection if possible?

Click to expand...

I made one from the PVC pipe instructions found here (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/diy-monster-bottle-tree-w-pics-105614/) by knightshift. It's basically a 2x4 base, with a large PVC pipe in the middle, with screws coming off of it that allow small pvc pipe dowels to be hung on them. This lets me put the dowels in sanitizer before/after I use them, reducing the risk of infection.

I'm wondering if you can mod the current wooden dowels to have PVC pipe over them (if they're small enough/pvc pipe is big enough to still fit in the bottle neck). If not, maybe put sanitizer in a spray bottle and spray the tree a few minutes before you use it? I'm not sure how much bacteria will sit/seep into the wood...

I wouldn't put sanitized bottles on bare wood. Wood is a magnet for microorganisms and attempting to sanitize the wood like you would for any brew-related item wouldn't kill everything because of all the nooks and crannies they can hide in. As ksocia says, there's probably a way to mod it by covering the dowels with something smooth/non-porous.

My father-in-law made me a perfect solution to this problem! I wish I could post pictures, but anyways... it is basically a flat sheet of very thin plywood (1/8" I think?) with 24 circles cut in them. Then the sheets are sitting on T-shaped blocks (to go in between the holes) that allow bottles to be placed in the holes with space below for air flow and drip space. Hope that makes sense! It is a great system and nothing (dust, etc) can fall into the bottles as they dry!