Storing Sterilized bottles

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Castawayales

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What do the biology/lab gurus think of this? ;)

If I sterilize bottles in my oven and allow them to cool in the oven (oven closed), then cap them with caps that have been soaked in 1 step, would they maintain their sterility until I opened them again?

Alternatively, if I loosely covered the tops with foil and crimped it on removal from the oven to keep the bottle caps out of the mix would I get a more acceptable sterility percentage?

It seems a waste to fire up the oven for two bottles when I could do six and pull them off of the shelf as needed for starters.

This assumes that all of the equipment I use is sanitized and I work in a clean, but not sterile environment.

Up until now I have "Baked" the bottles needed and poured boiling wort into them when they cool to about 200 degrees f, then put foil over the tops.

Thanks for the info,
Barry
 
In the labs I have worked in, we clean them (key), cover the tops of flasks with foil tightly then autoclave them, leaving the foil on only removing it in a sterile field. For this to work in the oven you need to make sure they are dry or the foil will come off.

To sterilize you need to go over 250F for 15 minutes. Of course, as soon as you remove the foil you can no longer consider it sterile, but good enough for beer.
 
You're going to trap some air in the bottles. While the bottles should remain sterile, the air will probably take on a stale quality. I don't know if that could effect the flavor of your beer.
 
What I do is fill my bottles with sanitizing solution ahead of time and then cap them untill they are needed. This insures that they are sterile and it takes away alot of work come bottling day.
 
You guys are taking this too far. I throw them in the dishwasher for a real quick rinse then they go to the oven @ 350 for about 20mins then I turn off the oven and wait for them to cool. I then bottle. Are they sterile anymore, no. Do they need to be? No. Clean is the key here.
 
z987k said:
You guys are taking this too far. I throw them in the dishwasher for a real quick rinse then they go to the oven @ 350 for about 20mins then I turn off the oven and wait for them to cool. I then bottle. Are they sterile anymore, no. Do they need to be? No. Clean is the key here.
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That sounds like too much work also.

Rinse clean after use, sanitize before use...;)
 
I think the OPs point was to develop a way to sanitize (or sterilize) the bottles and then store them until ready to bottle.

If you clean and dry them, foil the tops, put in the oven at 250F for 15-20minutes. You can pull them out (probably let them cool in the oven) and they can be stored indefinitely (as long as the foil is intact).

I might look into doing this too. I a week or so I have to bottle 10 gallons and it is hard for me to devote a huge chuck of my day to this, spreading the bottle cleaning/sanitizing duty out over the preceding weeks is a nice thought.
 
homebrewer_99 said:
That sounds like too much work also.

Rinse clean after use, sanitize before use...;)
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What 99 says..


I rinse out after use. If this is a store bought beer it gets rinsed and stored for delabeling at a later time.

Before I bottle:
I fill a 5 gal bucket with water and Iodophor,
let them soak for 10 min,
Rinse with jet rinse (I know I don't have to but it only takes a couple of minutes to rinse 50 bottles),
Put the bottles upsidedown in a cleaned plastic milk carton it holds 25, 12oz. bottles, I have a clean paper towels in the bottom

The two milk carton sit on my table next to the bottling bucket and I take them out 1 at a time.
 
The original question was about bottles for starters.

I personally use a pressure cooker as an autoclave and use pint and quart mason jars covered in foil. If you cover your bottles in foil, bake at 350 for I believe 30 minutes (might be 60) and then cool to room temp your bottles should remain sterile until you peel the foil tops off.
 
Thanks for the confirmation on my theory, and the other ideas on bottling.

As for bottling, I put them in the oven for an hour before bed @ 340, shut it down and they are ready to accept beer in the morning. Works for me.

Now that my thoughts have been confirmed, I can have starter bottles at the ready. Makes my hectic life easier.

Barry
 
I agree with others that a clean bottle sanitized immediately before bottling is best for bottling beer but if the oven works for you that's all that is important.

It seems that you could just add a few "starter" bottles to your normal bottling procedure and add the foil to those bottles. This will be just as good at giving you a sterile environment and you won't have to add an extra procedure and you'll always have starter bottles available.
 
dantodd said:
I agree with others that a clean bottle sanitized immediately before bottling is best for bottling beer but if the oven works for you that's all that is important.

It seems that you could just add a few "starter" bottles to your normal bottling procedure and add the foil to those bottles. This will be just as good at giving you a sterile environment and you won't have to add an extra procedure and you'll always have starter bottles available.
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Thanks for the idea. My mind is too sequential for that kind of thinking.

Barry
 
I wonder about the costs involved. What would be more economical in terms of time and money.

The costs for using sanitation fluid include some water and the sanitizer approx 60 seconds in the solution. I have a cooler that can hold about 40 bottles.

The cost of using an oven includes the cost to heat the oven plus the cost of condtioned air in the summer to cool your house or apt. because of the heating of it caused by the heating of the oven. In the winter it would be a benefit to heat the house or apt so the off set from heating the oven is free heat.

I guess time wise it would be about the same.
 
I don't like sterilizing and bottling on the same day, makes for too much work, every time I have enough bottles to fill an oven, I remove labels, clean them inside and out with a bottle washer, they all go in the oven at 350*F for an hour and I throw in a couple pieces of alum. foil. to sterilize it too Wait for them to cool to handle-able temps, wash my hands well, cover each with a small piece of foil, and store in boxes until ready to use. Never had a contamination, never noticed any stale smell to the air in them, and no problems at all.

yes, I am a lab guy and this is pretty much what we do in the lab other than using an autoclave instead of an oven.
 
If you work in a lab, just autocalve the darn things. Before I switched to kegging that is what I did. I was given some plastic beer cases, (sort of like milk crates with dividers) that I found to be autoclavable. Just slap a little foil on each bottle and toss it in the autoclave - use a liquid/slow exhaust cycle. Do not include a drying step - you might crack a few bottles with the high dry heat. I've also found that some of the heavy duty "cardboard" cases like those for returnable bottles can also stand up to the autoclave for a number of times through. Just handle them gently while wet/damp. They"ll be sterile as long as the foil is on tightly.
 
pjj2ba said:
If you work in a lab, just autocalve the darn things. Before I switched to kegging that is what I did. I was given some plastic beer cases, (sort of like milk crates with dividers) that I found to be autoclavable. Just slap a little foil on each bottle and toss it in the autoclave - use a liquid/slow exhaust cycle. Do not include a drying step - you might crack a few bottles with the high dry heat. I've also found that some of the heavy duty "cardboard" cases like those for returnable bottles can also stand up to the autoclave for a number of times through. Just handle them gently while wet/damp. They"ll be sterile as long as the foil is on tightly.
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I would, but I know what kind of crap going into that autoclave, and I don't want it anywhere near my beer. Viral waste, tissue culture, bacteria, yeast, mouse parts, etc. No freakin' way....I don't care if it is sterile, my beer crap isn't going in there...
 
It all started for me when I did some remodeling in the basement. I released a creature that withstands most sanitizers. I even watched a black film grow on a bucket of sanitizer one weekend.

Therefore I do all my work upstairs (near the oven) and since I switched to the oven I have never had a bad batch.

This summer I am switching to a sealed system using Co2 to push from carboy to carboy reducing the need for me to pack these carboys upstairs at all.

Barry
 
I would, but I know what kind of crap going into that autoclave, and I don't want it anywhere near my beer. Viral waste, tissue culture, bacteria, yeast, mouse parts, etc. No freakin' way....I don't care if it is sterile, my beer crap isn't going in there...
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Ahhh. I can understand that. In my building we don't do any animal bits in the autoclaves, just plants, bacteria and fungi. Plus our facilities manager is very fussy about the autoclaves being kept clean. Everything must go in a tray to contain any spills and if your forget something or leave a mess she tracks you down and makes sure you won't do it again!
 
Put a piece of aluminum foil over the top and squeeze it around the neck like a cap.

Foil can be put in the oven with the bottles. Caps can not.

Barry
 
I like the idea of being able to just grab a couple of cartons of ready to go bottles. I cannot afford the luxury (at the moment) of being able to spend whole days / or afternoons brewing and bottling. If I can break the process up into seperate stages that can be done at any time then that is fantastic.

1. Brew, stick in primary
2. 1 week / 2 week / 3 weeks later rack to Secondary.
3. 1 week / 2 week / 3 weeks later bottle.
4. 1-7 days Tidy up mess.

At any time I have a barrel stererlising I chuck in bottles and then cap them off.



...damn I cannot wait to start kegging!
 

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