No Rinse Sanitizers

Does everyone allow their equipment to totally air dry or do you use your buckets and bottles while they are still wet with sanitizer?

Reason I am asking is that while bottling I noticed the beer will foam up a bit when the inside of the bottle is still a bit wet. (This will end up as a larger air space under the cap.)

hmmm never really took not of the foaming when wet action...i usually allow my bottles to air dry - and when filling i tip the bottle to the spigot in a manner as not to get airiation of the liquid...then cap.

That's kind of my point...if your bottles are still wet you will get foaming while adding your brew.

I know that no rinse sanitizers like starsan are supposed to be just that... no rinse, but I really don't want any residue of any kind on my bottles, so I usually rinse thouroughly and let them sit on the bottle tree until they are dry.

Other sanitizers, like bleach, well they need to be well rinsed or they will add disgusting flavors to your beer... ask me how I know. Wait, DON'T ask me how I know.

homebrewer_99 said:

That's kind of my point...if your bottles are still wet you will get foaming while adding your brew.

Click to expand...

even if you do the tilt thing?

just asking because i've never waivered from that method?

I'm with Andre... I use 'no rinse' (iodophor to be exact) cleansers but I still rinse in scalding hot tap water. After I do rinse, I will turn the bottles upside down on the dishwasher rack but usually they are not completely dry by the time I start bottling. I have a bottling wand which fills the bottles from the bottom so tilting is not an issue. The remaining moisture in my bottles has yet to cause any foaming for me.

DyerNeedOfBeer said:

I'm with Andre... I use 'no rinse' (iodophor to be exact) cleansers but I still rinse in scalding hot tap water. After I do rinse, I will turn the bottles upside down on the dishwasher rack but usually they are not completely dry by the time I start bottling. I have a bottling wand which fills the bottles from the bottom so tilting is not an issue. The remaining moisture in my bottles has yet to cause any foaming for me.

Click to expand...

Rinsing iodophor basically makes it useless. For full effectivness, iodophor needs to drip dry, or at least needs to be left coating the surface for a bit. If you rinse it right after using it, you might as well not use it.

I would have to disagree bikebryan... or maybe just clarify the way I use it... I soak my bottles in the Iodophor for 3 to 5 mins... this is enough for the Iodophor to be effective. After that I allow them to drip dry for a bit while I get everything else ready for bottling. Before I bottle I rinse with hot water. The bottles are usually not completely dry by then but they have been soaked and allowed some time to dry. The way I am using it as stated above is backed only from reading books and internet articles so if I am missing something, please do enlighten me

DyerNeedOfBeer said:

I would have to disagree bikebryan... or maybe just clarify the way I use it... I soak my bottles in the Iodophor for 3 to 5 mins... this is enough for the Iodophor to be effective. After that I allow them to drip dry for a bit while I get everything else ready for bottling. Before I bottle I rinse with hot water. The bottles are usually not completely dry by then but they have been soaked and allowed some time to dry. The way I am using it as stated above is backed only from reading books and internet articles so if I am missing something, please do enlighten me

Click to expand...

Let's clarify further--if your iodophor mixture is 12.5 ppm or less, you do not need to rinse. Any more than that, you do need to rinse.
If you are using a 12.5 ppm mixture and you rinse, you might as well spit in every bottle before you put beer in it. Rinsing defeats the purpose completely.

ORRELSE said:

Rinsing defeats the purpose completely.

Click to expand...

That's kind of like what I was thinking.

The "tilt" thing? I don't understand what you mean.

I use drying trees (I have 2 of them).

My point is that sometimes when I am bottling the bottles are not completely dry and adding beer produces a foaming action. The foam sits on top of the beer (naturally), but this foam takes up space and basically adds more air space above the beer (unless I allow it to sit so I can fill the bottle to the right height.

Iodophor mixed to 12.5 ppm is a no-rinse sanitizer. It really means no-rinse. In fact, I don't let anything drip dry. I empty out all the liquid I can and then use immediately. I put freshly cooled wort in a still wet carboy, I rack into a still wet keg, and I siphon with a still wet siphon rig. Someone did some very good research and experimentation on the flavor threshhold of iodophor. Here is the link:
http://www.homebrew.com/articles/article08290301.shtml.

I don't know if rinsing the bottles after sanitizing is the same as spitting in them, but it certainly does seem counter-productive. Even with the chlorine content of most city water supplies, none of your plumbing or faucet internals are sanitized, therefore they could contain beer spoiling bacteria.

My take on this is - don't rinse. Don't even drip dry. You won't taste the difference. Drain well and move on. If you leave something to air dry, there is a higher chance that wild yeast from the air will land on the surface the longer it sits there. No-rinse sanitizers are there for your convenience, take advantage.

Prosit,

THAT'S what I was trying to find out...how others do it, wet or dry.

I've been doing it wet ever since I started brewing.

Thanks.

Anyone else? Wet or dry?

homebrewer_99 said:

The "tilt" thing? I don't understand what you mean.

I use drying trees (I have 2 of them).

Click to expand...

if you will pardon my hastely drawn and crude autocad drawing ,this is what i mean - second example alows the beer to flow along the outside edge of the bottle - i don't get foam that way. example one always produced a lot of turbelance and foam

http://www.madawg.net/publicpix/FILLING.jpg

when i did get foam i never attributed it to onsetp sanatizing...hmmmm

i use milk crates to turn the bottles upside down and drain dry.

http://madawg.net/mypix/albums/firstspringbrew/normal_100_0148.JPG

my set up probably is more primative than what you have though.

I don't do beer, but wine is my game. I use my metabisulphite, rinse the bottle's and hang em upside down on the bottle tree.
if some of them are dry by the time I get the wine in, oh well. I certainly do not rinse them, they just "dry" on the bottle tree.

As far as my brewing - I sanitise my fermenters & carboys with the metabisulphite, and do not rinse them either. The concentration of the cleanser is not even close to be able to kill the yeast's etc.. -

Kilroy

tnlandsailor said:

Someone did some very good research and experimentation on the flavor threshhold of iodophor. Here is the link:
http://www.homebrew.com/articles/article08290301.shtml.

Click to expand...

Good stuff there, thanks Dennis.
After reading this article, I will surely be changing my sanitizing methods.

DyerNeedOfBeer said:

Good stuff there, thanks Dennis.
After reading this article, I will surely be changing my sanitizing methods.

Click to expand...

This forum is awesome, isn't it?
I wish it wasn't so dead sometimes, but....

brewhead said:

http://www.madawg.net/publicpix/FILLING.jpg

i use milk crates to turn the bottles upside down and drain dry.

http://madawg.net/mypix/albums/firstspringbrew/normal_100_0148.JPG

my set up probably is more primative than what you have though.

Click to expand...

Your drawings were fine.

Nice heavy duty milk crates too.

Question...did you sanitize the milk crates first? If not you are sitting sanitized bottles on an unsanitary surface. Just a thought.

The crates look a lot like the beer crates used overseas. I have about 10 of them and wish I had more.

I use cheap milk crates for the shorter bottles. I also line the bottoms of my crates with cardboard (from old boxes, etc). When they get wet/warped, etc., I just change them out with new cardboard. I also use them to store and move my carboys with.

OK, ok... you all have convinced me. this weekend when I racked my brews to secondary and harvested some yeast from one of the yeast cakes, I sanitized the secondary with starsan and let the carboy sit inverted for 5 minutes or so. I racked into the carboy while there was still sanitizer foam clinging to the inside of the carboy. Its a little unnerving. But I kept saying to myself, don't worry... have a... well you get the picture.

Indeed we do!

(I would not like seeing the foam in my bottle either).

Question...did you sanitize the milk crates first? If not you are sitting sanitized bottles on an unsanitary surface. Just a thought.

Click to expand...

absolutely EVERYTHING gets a sanatizing bath - the spots you see on the crates and the siphon are water droplets frozen in time by the flash but yes they get sanatizing.

and the crates serve double duty as a carboy carrying device and for when i wash out the carboy and turn it on it's top to drain - they serve me well.

I use star san acid sanitizer, and do leave things wet when transfering and bottling beer. Last time I added dry hops to a secondary fermenter, there was still a bit of foam from the sanitizer (the only downside to using star san, as far as I can tell) and I just threw the hops in on top of the foam. The beer I made there is the best batch I have brewed - no taste of sanitizer at all. From other threads, and from some of my brewing friends, I have heard that they noticed a slight flavor from Iodophor, but it was probably the result of an incorrect dilution of the sanitizer. Go wet, for sure.

Sounds like it doesn't matter one way or the other, wet or dry.

That's good news. Good comments all around.

I hope others have read these comments and it answers their questions also.

Thanks all.

One last thing on sanitizers. I've used both Star San and Iodophor. The Star San works really well, lasts a long time so you can get several uses out of it, but it foams like crazy. The foam does santize, but who wants to rack onto sanitizer foam? Since it's foam, you just can't get the stuff out of a carboy. For this reason, I've stuck with Iodophor. Also, I've used Iodophor in 2 different strengths. Williams Brewing sells a double strength Iodophor that only takes 1/4 teaspoon per gallon (for 12.5 ppm, no rinse concentration). Good stuff, except it foams almost as bad as the Star San. I've since switched to the standard strength Iodophor, 1/2 tsp per gallon at 12.5 ppm.

Prosit,

Trial + error = success!!!

I use one-step sanitizer, which is a no rinse sanitizer, and then I put the bottles in the dishwasher and run them through a cycle (with no soap). The heat again, sanitizes the bottles and also dries them. Works great, have never had a problem.

brewboy said:

I use one-step sanitizer, which is a no rinse sanitizer, and then I put the bottles in the dishwasher and run them through a cycle (with no soap). The heat again, sanitizes the bottles and also dries them. Works great, have never had a problem.

Click to expand...

Why all the extra work? Once you have used the no-rinse sanitizer, you are done. Unless you have an industrial-style dishwasher, you aren't really getting any decent sanitizing out of it. Most of the industrial dishwashers use some form of pressurized steam to sanitize and you aren't getting that in a home unit!

In the time it takes my dishwasher to cycle I can soak two cases of bottles in iodophor and have them dry on my bottle tree. There is no question on whether they are sanitized and I've not wasted a lot of time or effort.

Bleach has severd me just fine..I will have to look into the no rinse sanitizers I did read on this board that you can put your bottels in the oven for 15-20 min @400* to sanitize.anybody doing this?

Porter fan said:

Bleach has severd me just fine..I will have to look into the no rinse sanitizers I did read on this board that you can put your bottels in the oven for 15-20 min @400* to sanitize.anybody doing this?

Click to expand...

I've heard that baking the bottles repeatedly will weaken them over time.
Don't know if this is fact, but something to be aware of.

Just curious as to why you think that wet bottles give more foam? In lots of european bars they will wet the inside of a glass before pouring into to to *reduce* the amount of head you get....
wierd.