bottle sanitization: is it REALLY necessary?

I used to be a complete prude when it came to sterilizing my bottles when it came time to bottle my brews. However, there have been numerous times in the recent past that I had simply run out of sterilized bottles during a hardcore bottling session, and substituted un-sanitized glass bottles (and PET bottles) in place. While I expected blackish-green globs of mold and bacteria to permeate the bottles, bringing the worst tastes and flavors imaginable, it has yet to happen.

Keep in mind that these bottles, while not at all sterilized/sanitized, had been rinsed completely clean of residues MULTIPLE times, and were allowed to dry for days to weeks. They simply had not undergone proper chemical/temperature cleansing.

Despite the lack of active sanitization, these bottles somehow managed to carbonate and age exactly like the sterilized bottles did. After trying to smell and taste the difference between my unsanitized bottles vs the sterilized ones, I came to the conclusion that I could not tell the difference, and I was wasting my time by baking 50 bottles at 250ºF for 12 hours.

Since then, I decided to try bottling an imperial IPA, a scotch wee heavy, and an imperial stout into unsanitized bottles, and all batches have ended in great success.

Ergo, I ask you non-professional-but-awesome brewmasters out there: is sanitizing/sterilizing bottles REALLY necessary? That is, if you're a prude when it comes to rinsing them out after each use?

Other pertinent disclosures:
1) All beers were > 9% ABV. Ethanol kills baddies.
2) All beers were consumed within 3 months of maturation.
3) Beers were bottled in re-used amber glass AND clear screw-top PET bottles (for simple carbonation monitoring).
4) I always sanitize my primary/secondary/bottling/siphoning equipment with iodophor.
5) Love the iodophor. Brown stains are just proof that it works. No aroma/flavor imparted. StarSan can go to hell with its bubbles and acidity.

first, there's a difference between SANITIZED and STERILIZED

it's just good practice to keep everything sanitized, including bottles. sterilized is overkill

I rinse bottles after drinking. keep them in the box until use. 1 spritz with the starsan into each bottle at bottling time and I've had no infected bottles.

I've only made wine at this point, but a good rinse and a few squirts of StarSan is all I've ever done to bottles.

GrogNerd said:

first, there's a difference between SANITIZED and STERILIZED

it's just good practice to keep everything sanitized, including bottles. sterilized is overkill

I rinse bottles after drinking. keep them in the box until use. 1 spritz with the starsan into each bottle at bottling time and I've had no infected bottles.

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I'm going beyond that by simply rinsing my used bottles with warm water a few times and letting them drip-dry. There is no chemical or sterilization for these bottles before they store their next brew. I seem to have had good luck with my process, but I'm wondering how feasible this process really is. Am I just lucky, or are we stupid to be so hard-core when it comes to sanitization?

SKYY said:

I'm going beyond that by simply rinsing my used bottles with warm water a few times and letting them drip-dry. There is no chemical or sterilization for these bottles before they store their next brew. I seem to have had good luck with my process, but I'm wondering how feasible this process really is. Am I just lucky, or are we stupid to be so hard-core when it comes to sanitization?

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what's this "we" crap?

I'm definitely stupid. I don't know you; can't form an opinion just yet

SKYY said:

imperial IPA, a scotch wee heavy, and an imperial stout into unsanitized bottles, and all batches have ended in great success.

Other pertinent disclosures:
1) All beers were > 9% ABV. Ethanol kills baddies.
2) All beers were consumed within 3 months of maturation.

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Holy crap! Are you sure you're in the proper state of mind to be making any decisions about sanitation?! Those are some serious back to back brews, and some serious drinking to make them go away!

My thought on sanitation is this - You may very well get away with not sanitizing any piece along the way, or maybe even not sanitizing anything for that matter. The key word in that however is "may". Brewing is fun for sure, but it's also work and takes quite a bit of time to accomplish (with or without sanitation). Why take the risk? BTW if you decide to go back to sanitizing bottles at some point - 12hrs in the oven is way overkill. If it's not dead in an hour, it ain't go'na die! If you insist on 12hrs however, put in a roast along side your bottles. That way you'll have a good meal after you get done bottling.........

i've had the occasional bottle infection. they have never been a big deal, just a little overcarbed and the taste was off. so i dump it. but when i give away beer for friends or competition, this would be totally unacceptable. for that reason, i try to be pretty careful.

SKYY, I have to chuckle a bit, only because you're contemplation going from hardcore sterilization (I mean, 12 hours, really?) to not even sanitizing. If you feel so strongly about iodophor, why not just keep some on hand on bottling day and do a quick sanitize on any extra bottles you need. I don't know the contact time required, or the concentration needed for no-rinse, but maybe someone here does.

SKYY -- Nice to see another Iodophor fan. I swear it works better on wild yeast than starsan. I do keep starsan around though. What I like about starsan is that it is stable for a long time in RO/distilled water. So that is what I keep in my spray bottle. But starsan for sanitizing bottles? No way

The no rinse concentration of iodophor is on the bottle. I think it is 6mL/gallon with 1 min contact time or 3mL/gallon with 2 min contact time.

Well. I guess I will just always waste my time sanitizing bottles because it was embedded in my brain from day one. I never gave iodophor any thought and I blame these forums. Star San seems to be favored or mentioned more often than iodophor. Either way, so far so good with Star San.

I think the extra time it takes to sanitize is worth it after I spend a minimum of 4 hours prepping, brewing, and cleaning up for one 5-gallon batch.

Is it necessary? Well, you had three big beers and things went ok. I would say do what works for you and if there is an infection one day, perhaps reintroduce proper sanitation into your brew / bottle session.

I prefer to be on the safe side & sanitize my bottles right before filling. Starsan has been great & easy to use. I rinse the trub out of my bottles & fill to the shoulder with water to scrub with my bottle brush before draining & a quick rinse. Then onto the bottle tree to dry before storing in covered boxes. Gotta go with what works...

OP, heating bottles is a BAD idea. I used to bake them in the oven, that was a mistake. Period. Weakens them to boot.

You use Iodophor, make a solution, fill your bottles with it, drain them onto a bottling tree that you also dunked in the Iodophor. That way you have a sanitized bottle that is likely to stay that way, upside down and bottom pretty well covered up.

Sanitation is key. Nothing prudish about it. I wear black mechanic rubber gloves when working with any beers while bottling. Your hands are filthy dirty. Well my hands are and yours likely to be too.

So don't be lazy, and don't bake your bottles.

Why no Starsan for sanitizing bottles? I use it for everything. Should I be using a different product for bottles, fermenter, siphon, etc.? I thought you had to rinse the Iodophor?

As a follow up, I immediately (or within 30 minutes) rinse the bottles well after I drain them of their original contents (no scrubbing) and set them in the basement. On bottling day, I rinse again with hot water then right before filling I give them a shot of Star San, drain and fill with brew. No problems yet. The bubbles are annoying but I am learning to accept the foam knowing that means the stuff is working.

bierandbikes said:

Why no Starsan for sanitizing bottles? I use it for everything. Should I be using a different product for bottles, fermenter, siphon, etc.? I thought you had to rinse the Iodophor?

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No, iodophor is no-rinse at the proper concentration. You can use it or star-san or whatever.

It's true that sanitation may not be strictly necessary- but it's one of those things that can make a difference in the beer and is cheap, quick, and easy so it's worthwhile. I spend way too much time and money and effort on all of my batches to risk not sanitizing.

People made beer for thousands of years without sanitation. Sometimes they drank sour beer, though.

bierandbikes said:

Why no Starsan for sanitizing bottles? I use it for everything. Should I be using a different product for bottles, fermenter, siphon, etc.? I thought you had to rinse the Iodophor?

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Nah, I probably stirred a hornet's nest with my comment on iodophor v starsan. Both are proven to be effective.

I had a buddy sour a porter recently during bottling because he didn't properly sanitize his bottles. I agree with several of the posters that it's way better to be safe than sorry, especially when its so easy to spray starsan into a bottle.

Either way, it's really just whatever floats your boat

bierandbikes said:

As a follow up, I immediately (or within 30 minutes) rinse the bottles well after I drain them of their original contents (no scrubbing) and set them in the basement. On bottling day, I rinse again with hot water then right before filling I give them a shot of Star San, drain and fill with brew. No problems yet. The bubbles are annoying but I am learning to accept the foam knowing that means the stuff is working.

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Don't let that don't fear the foam make you not fear the foam. OK fear is a bit severe, annoy you. I agree those bubbles are a pain. This is especially true when a big bubble burps up from your bottle at filling time. Iodophor drains mucho better. Just get a bottle tree or rack thing and give gravity some time.

progmac said:

Nah, I probably stirred a hornet's nest with my comment on iodophor v starsan. Both are proven to be effective.

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No hornet's nest, just valid opinions. I think it's awesome when a commmunity can discuss without fear of attack. I used iodophor in the past, but could taste it even in the no-rinse amounts. When I switched to starsan, I was delighted with the ease and the lack of off flavors. I just spray my bottle tree, pump a few pumps in each bottle with a vinator, and put my sanitary bottles onto my sanitary bottle tree. Caps too.

When the guy at my LHBS saw me getting starsan, he tried to steer me away from it, saying I'd have to rinse, because the taste would show in finished beer. On my next batch I experimented with starsan, bleach and iodophor, and did a blind tasting, and no one could tell any differences between them on a low hopped amber (not even me).

I mistakenly poured an expensive DIPA into an unsanitized carboy for primary. I wash and rinse them extensively, and keep them covered, but I typically sanitize at the time of filling them, it was just a very long day and I overlooked it.

Came out fine. I'm with most, it's not that difficult or expensive, especially with StarSan that I reuse multiple times. But it's likely not the end of a beer if a few bottles are unsanitized.

Cyclman said:

I mistakenly poured an expensive DIPA into an unsanitized carboy for primary. I wash and rinse them extensively, and keep them covered, but I typically sanitize at the time of filling them, it was just a very long day and I overlooked it.

Came out fine. I'm with most, it's not that difficult or expensive, especially with StarSan that I reuse multiple times. But it's likely not the end of a beer if a few bottles are unsanitized.

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This is the "flexible" beer-brewing thought process that I'm referring to mostly. Granted: I live on an island in the East Asia Sea, but that doesn't keep me safe from wild yeasts and bacteria.

My main reason for starting this thread was to see if other people have had been mostly successful when bottling/fermenting their beers in less-than-adequately sanitized containers.

What I've ULTIMATELY learned from my experience and that of others, is that as long as you CLEAN your bottling equipment adequately, you do not have to worry about bacterial/wild yeast infections. Beer is strong (just look at how they brewed in the Middle Ages!). Yeast is a really strong life form. This all is especially true if your beers exhibit ethanol contents around 10% or higher!

SKYY said:

This is the "flexible" beer-brewing thought process that I'm referring to mostly. Granted: I live on an island in the East Asia Sea, but that doesn't keep me safe from wild yeasts and bacteria.

My main reason for starting this thread was to see if other people have had been mostly successful when bottling/fermenting their beers in less-than-adequately sanitized containers.

What I've ULTIMATELY learned from my experience and that of others, is that as long as you CLEAN your bottling equipment adequately, you do not have to worry about bacterial/wild yeast infections. Beer is strong (just look at how they brewed in the Middle Ages!). Yeast is a really strong life form. This all is especially true if your beers exhibit ethanol contents around 10% or higher!

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There's a reason people started paying attention to sanitation. Getting lucky and avoiding an infected batch with poor habits wasn't one of them. In the Middle Ages they would fling their crap out onto the street because that's just what they did. The Black Plague, and all that.

SKYY said:

I was wasting my time by baking 50 bottles at 250ºF for 12 hours.

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Where did you get that from? Wikipedia says:

The proper time and temperature for Dry-Heat sterilization is 160°C (320°F) for 2 hours or 170°C (340°F) for 1 hour.

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(I know, not reliable source, blah blah blah. Couldn't find a better source at the moment. I'm going to trust them on this one.)

So you weren't doing it hot enough. You can't make up for the lower temp with more time.

SKYY said:

1) All beers were > 9% ABV. Ethanol kills baddies.

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You put a smiley, so I don't know if you are kidding, but 9% ABV is not enough. I've used 70% isopropyl alcohol at work for sanitizing. Leave a 9% ABV beer out for a few days in a glass at room temperature and let me know how resistant it is to microbial growth.

Even hand sanitizer - the stuff that is supposed to sanitize your hands - isn't immune from contamination. Kleenex hand sanitizer recalled over bacterial contamination

With that all said, I don't go crazy about sanitation. I make sure the bottles are clean and mostly dry when I put them away. On bottling day, I dunk them in the starsan solution and drain them. That's it. Seems like a nice compromise over doing nothing but compared to your baking 12 hours method.

One time, I saw that a bottle hadn't been cleaned out at all. It had a layer of gunk on the bottom, so I put it aside. Well, of course we put beer in it and bottled it. I didn't know which one it was so we just kept it. And we never did find the "bad" bottle. So you could probably get away without sanitizing most of the time, but I'd rather not risk it.

DWhitwell said:

I just spray my bottle tree, pump a few pumps in each bottle with a vinator, and put my sanitary bottles onto my sanitary bottle tree. Caps too.

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That's my system to a tee. I hit the bottles with a few shots on the Vinator and set them on the bottle tree. By the time I rack to the bottling bucket, those bottles are clean, drained and ready to go. The bottle tree base makes a great place to put bottle caps in some Starsan.

MaxStout said:

That's my system to a tee. I hit the bottles with a few shots on the Vinator and set them on the bottle tree. By the time I rack to the bottling bucket, those bottles are clean, drained and ready to go. The bottle tree base makes a great place to put bottle caps in some Starsan.

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I used to toss them into the reservoir at the top. It was already full of starsan solution anyway.

I've got only one bottle infected among thousands and the reason was that I forgot to sanitize it.

Just as a counter point. I had some bottles that had been infected with Brett. I washed the bottles with soap and water... well the ones I thought were infected in the batch. I then sanitized the bottles by dunking them in a 5 gal bucket filled with StarSan. The StarSan was 3 weeks old at that point as I was prone to using it for multiple batches. Later that day I also reused the StarSan to sanitize primary and secondary carboys. Long story short, everything that touched the StarSan solution after the Brett bottles got contaminated. It took me damn near 6 months to get all of my equipment decontaminated. I still sanitize with StarSan, but I don't reuse the solution.

For the hell of it, I sanitized my latest batch of bottles for brewing via iodophor. It took surprisingly little time--just enough time to rinse each bottle with iodophor solution, and drain it. I didn't rinse, since it's not necessary, and also since the bottles didn't have any iodine scents after I was done.

I'll be sure to let you guys know how this batch ends up.

I fill up a bathtub with hot water and a couple cups of bleach on bottling day and toss everything in there for an hour. I've heard a lot of people talking trash about using bleach as a sterilizing agent but I'm a biochemist and that's what we sterilize with in the laboratory. If it's good enough for pharmaceuticals I'm sure it's good enough for homebrewing.

But then you're rinsing with tap water right? Presumably your tap water is bug free (I used to top up my extract batches with tap water), but there is a slight chance that might bring an infection.

That's why the no rinse sanitizers are better than bleach.

Hopefully, you aren't tasting the stuff that comes out of your lab. It's great for sterilizing, but not so great on the flavor side. While it can be used successfully in the homebrewing arena, I have had beers given to me where the band-aid flavor was very strong. In each case the brewer had used chlorine to disinfect.

I'm relatively new to homebrewing and the only off taste that I ever had a problem with were chlorophenols (band-aid taste) in the beer.

It was a major problem for me and it took me a while to isolate the problem: rinse aid in the dishwasher. At first I thought it was the chlorine and chloramine in the water supply, then PET bottles, but I was wrong. Now I just clean the with OXI, rinse, leave to dry and then sanitize with Starsan on bottling day. It has been plain sailing ever since (fingers crossed).

Switching to kegs this weekend, but I only gave them a good hot rinse when I finished a beer. Once I had a bunch, put them in the dishwasher on the sanirize setting, took them out, put foil on tops of eac and stored. They were ready for filling whenever needed without any addition cleaning, etc.

Moriarty said:

I'm relatively new to homebrewing and the only off taste that I ever had a problem with were chlorophenols (band-aid taste) in the beer.

It was a major problem for me and it took me a while to isolate the problem: rinse aid in the dishwasher. At first I thought it was the chlorine and chloramine in the water supply, then PET bottles, but I was wrong. Now I just clean the with OXI, rinse, leave to dry and then sanitize with Starsan on bottling day. It has been plain sailing ever since (fingers crossed).

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I used to sanitize bottles in the dishwasher. Worked great. Then we got a new dishwasher (Bosch) that used liquid rinse aid, a function that cannot be turned off on this model. But I switched to using a vinator at about that time, so the dishwasher thing is moot anyway.

Give me a break. Starsan and it's bubbles and acid? Oh the humanity!!!!

To OP, what you're doing is applying anecdotal data to an empirical question. Can you get by with what you're doing? Sure. Is it worth the risk of a gusher when your beer makes a best of show round at a big competition, or even when that friend in the industry that you really want to impress opens it? That's for you to decide.

I rinse bottles thoroughly (immediately after drinking the contents) in very hot water then drip dry. I dunk them in a bucket of starsan before I bottle...how hard is that? Not. At. All.

I think if my sanitizing process was baking bottles for twelve hours, I'd be eager to get away from it, too.

You don't need to stop sanitizing, you just need to stop doing it the way you were. It isn't the function that's broken, it's the process.