Do you need to clean your bottles if you're diligent with rinsing after opening?

I've seen a number of posts on here saying that if you always rinse your bottles right after pouring, then all you need to do is sanitize prior to refilling. Anyone disagree with this?

That is what I do, and I've never had a problem. Rinse the heck out of the bottles so nothing can dry to the bottom, then just sanitize when it comes time to bottle. Of course, when someone gives me bottles that haven't been thoroughly rinsed right after drinking... or when I need to get the labels off, then I soak bottles in Oxiclean before sanitizing.

Nope.

If you have a clean bottle you have just emptied, and rinse it well, all you need to do is to give it a shot of Star San before you bottle again. If you want to put it on a sanitizing rinse in your dishwasher, or a couple hours in your oven, that's fine too, if it will make you feel better.

A bottle that is visually clean and then hit with StarSan, Iodophor, bleach solution, etc, is ready to go. StarSan is best in my opinion because you don't have to worry about rinsing.

+1... rinse really well and Starsan

Thanks guys. I'm gonna skip the cleaning part then. Having to soak all your bottles ahead of time sounds like a pain the ass to me.

I am kind of anal retentive about it, but I like to hold my bottles up to the light and look at them before I sanitize each one. I do sometimes catch ones that have crap dried in them even though I am careful about rinsing them out immediately.

weirdboy said:

I am kind of anal retentive about it, but I like to hold my bottles up to the light and look at them before I sanitize each one. I do sometimes catch ones that have crap dried in them even though I am careful about rinsing them out immediately.

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I do the same thing. I'm generally good about rinsing my bottles after I pour, but I found that if I didn't dry them well, I'd sometimes still get stuff to grow in there. Then that would dry by the time it came to reuse the bottle and it was stuck on like glue. My solution has been to rinse and then set the bottles upside down over a paper towel. Keeps everything clean enough that a simple sanitization is good enough for refilling.

+1 Rinse very well, dry, examine before use, sanitize then bottle.

check out the jet bottle washer thing. sprayes the crap out of the bottles and probably wastes less water since it cuts off when you dont have a bottle on it. makes for fast n easy rinsing

I do for a couple rounds of bottling. The thing that I found is depending on the beer I get a slight mineral film build up that rinsing does not remove. So when I see that on a bottle I throw it in with whatever else I'm removing labels from with Oxyclean. The deposit is gone and the bottle is clean.

rycov said:

check out the jet bottle washer thing. sprayes the crap out of the bottles and probably wastes less water since it cuts off when you dont have a bottle on it. makes for fast n easy rinsing

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i do the same thing just with the cheap little plastic "water balloon" filler... then dry then.. works great and only about a buck.

One of my daughers gave me about 50 bottles she had saved for me. Some of them were so disgusting that I simply got rid of them. The others were soaked to remove labels and then scrubbed inside with a bottle brush and oxiclean. Now that I know for certain that they are clean, I only rinse them thoroughly after emptying and sanitize them in the dishwasher before bottling.

glenn514