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Brewer_Steve

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Joined
Dec 21, 2008
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Location
Ottawa, ON, Canada
A friend told me that he had some great bottles for me since he hasn't brewed in years. He was kind enough to give me about 80 fantastic bottles for free. The problem is that they are the absolute filthiest things I've seen.

They weren't rinsed out and had quite a bit of sediment in the bottom. Some of them were stored sealed for years and others were stored open.

I put them in my laundry tub to soak in a strong bleach solution. After 30 hours I checked on them and the entire top of the laundry tub was coated with fuzzy mold balls floating above the bottles.

I spent about 3 hours scrubbing the bottles to get them clean.

Now I'm debating whether I should bother cleaning the other half of the bottles he gave me or if I should just chuck them...

Free bottles are great - if they're clean.
 
Next time hot water and oxyclean and a long soak, will save you all those hours of scrubbing..the oxy bubbles break up the toughest decages old sediment, as well as removes beer bottle labels and replaces the need for any carboy or bottle brushes...

I bought 3 cases of ancient pint bottles that were probably as bad as those...Never lifted a scrubber...between the oxyclean and a jet bottle washer it was a piece of cake.
 
80 bottles are not alot of bottles.....give them away (craigslist) or recycle them don't throw them away! one mans trash is anothers treasure
 
OxyClean works well and so does some hot (160°F) PBW. I inherited about 100 ceramic swing top bottles in terrible shape but just filled up in Eskie cooler with hot water/PBW and submerged the bottles. Left them for a few hours, came back and added the second set of bottles. I didn't measure teh temperature of the water the second time but it was still pretty warm so I just left the second batch overnight. Worked well enough and only a few required scrubbing.
 
Homebrewer's probably single handedly keep this guy in business...

billy_oxyclean.jpg


Yes regular old oxyclean....though most cheap generic sodium percarbonate products work as well...just about everybig box store has their own brand though I think the regular brand is the best.

Don't believe me? Check out the MAXED OUT search on here for oxyclean...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/search.php?searchid=2865226

oxyclean_copy.jpg


Personally I think it is 10 times better than PBW and you can buy it cheaper as well...The best price I've seen is for a huge box of it for 14 dollars at Sam's Club...
 
I use the oxyclean and love it! My sams club also has it in the bigbox, but is only the oxyclean versatile, not the oxyclean versatile free. I had always heard the free was what you wanted because there were no perfumes.
 
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