Sanitized bottle storage

Trying to find a way to ease bottling until I can afford a keg setup. As of now, I spend an hour or so scrubbing bottles, rinsing, and then soaking in Star San. If I cover the bottles with a sanitized piece of aluminum foil, they should remain sanitized for a while, yes? That way I can just bite the bullet and spend an afternoon taking care of a LOT of bottles at once and get it knocked out so I don't have to worry about it when it comes time to bottle.

I wouldn't trust it....Starsan is aNo 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.

I sterilize my bottles in the oven. After I clean them all, I put tin foil over the opening and bake the bottles for two hours at 320 degrees. This beats using StarSan, since it's not very labor intensive. There's no dip and shake. Just stack them in the oven and forget it. Plus, once they are sterilized, the theory is that they will remain so until you take the tin foil off the top. It works because the oven sterilizes instead of sanitizing. StarSan sanitizes, which means it kills enough of the baddies to keep them from taking over. The oven sterilizes, which kills all the baddies, so there's nothing inside the bottle to grow and airborn bacteria shouldn't be able to get past the tin foil. I got the idea from Palmer's How To Brew at http://www.howtobrew.com I have experimented with a couple of bottles that were sterilized this way two months before I bottled a Black IPA in them. The brew came out fine.

I get my bottles clean, let them dry and then store them in the box upside down. After letting them dry, I make sure to shake out the last bit of water that is in the bottle.

This reduces the amount of dust and anything else that may collect in the bottles.

Since I bottle from keg, I wash (oxiclean), then sanitize (Star San), then freeze the bottles in zip lock bags. (I also put a bit of the Star San into the zip lock bag, shake it up, drain the excess Star San back into my Star San bucket before putting the Star San'd bottles into the zip lock bag.)

Works like a charm, but does take freezer space.

I do the same as Revvy. I wash them when I empty them, let them drain & dry in the dish rack and put them in a box. On bottling day, I use the Vinator with Star-San. I don't worry about being autoclave sterile since the beer has alcohol at this point. I've also used the dishwasher as a bottle rack as discussed elsewhere on HBT.

Thanks for the helpful replies! It appears that the Vinator is worth the cost then. Reckon I know what my next purchase is

And I've discovered that if I leave bottles soaking in some oxi clean overnight, even the most stubborn of labels will slide right off (looking at you Rogue . . .)!

I just make sure I rinse out my empties after use and put me in bankers boxes until next time I bottle. As long as there is no mold in the bottom, I run them through a dishwasher cycle and voila. Works every time.

copyright1997 said:

Since I bottle from keg, I wash (oxiclean), then sanitize (Star San), then freeze the bottles in zip lock bags. (I also put a bit of the Star San into the zip lock bag, shake it up, drain the excess Star San back into my Star San bucket before putting the Star San'd bottles into the zip lock bag.)

Works like a charm, but does take freezer space.

Click to expand...

Why freeze them?

mewithstewpid said:

Why freeze them?

Click to expand...

Because I am bottling from a keg (which is carbonated) to a bottle. To do this, there is less foaming if:
1) You reduce the serving pressure from the keg to as low as you can get while still getting a flow. (I actually take the keg off of gas, vent it (mostly), and then use it. When the flow stops completely I turn on the gas for a couple/few seconds, and repeat.)
2. You reduce the temperature of the bottles by freezing them.
3. You cap immediately.

I've done this for a bunch of batches and after some practice, it works great. I've had beer that I did many months ago and it is still nicely carbonated.

See this thread for details: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/we-no-need-no-stinking-beer-gun-24678/

Advantages:
1. Let's you carbonate in the keg. No sediment in the bottles. No guessing at proper carbonation level (you can adjust it once carbonated in the keg).
2. Let's you take your beer with you, while still normally enjoying your stuff on tap.
3. Free's up keezer space. Once the keg starts getting "light", I will typically bottle the rest. I do this because my keezer is full and I have another keg (or more) waiting to be put in the keezer.

Dis-advantages:
1. Harder to do than initial bottling, as the beer is already carbonated. Takes a bit of practice, you might get a couple/few "beer sprays" on you at first.
2. Requires kegs etc.

neat, thanks for the write up