keeping bottles sanitary

So Im attempting the near impossible tonight. Two of my friends and I will put three batches in bottles in the next few hours. My question: I am sanitizing the bottles before they show up, to save their time. What is the best way to keep them sanitary? They wont all fit on my bottle tree at once. Should I just leave them uncovered an hope for the best, or should I be safe (and wasteful) and cover them with aluminum foil or something? Or is there another solution?

- magno

personally I would get a big bucket (clean garbage can, or rubbermaid container) and fill it with a no rinse sanitizer like iodopher. put as many (all?) of your clean bottles as you can into it and when you are ready to start bottling fill your dishwasher with as many bottles as it will hold. they will drip dry and stay that way 'cause they shoule be upside down. as you are filling them one of your brew-prentices can be refilling the dishwasher with bottles fresh out of the container of sanitizer. if your container doesn't hold all 150 or so bottles we are talking about here then replace them with fresh clean bottles as you are filling the dishwasher.

a constant cycle.

I sanitize them, put them back in the cases and put a layer of plastic wrap over the top of each full case.

Put a piece of aluminum foil or saran wrap in the bottom the case and place the bottles upside down back into the cases. The sanitizing solution will drain out and sanitize the foil/wrap and the bottles will dry.

Or invert them on the spines of your dishwasher rack. Between that and your bottling tree, you should be fine.

Good thing you've got some help. Last time I bottled, I did 4 cases on my own. A royal PITA.

We wound up putting the first batch on the tree and leaving the other two batches in the cases, sanitary. We put the botles from the cases up on the tree as the next brew was getting racked into the bottling bucket. I guess I should be ok with sanitation. I dont think that Im comfortable putting sanitary bottles in the dishwasher rack.

Having three people bottling made the process a breeze. I have a "T" fitting in the line that comes from the bucket to the bottles. That way two of could fill the bottles, and one could cap them. It took 2 hours to bottle 3 batches, not counting setup (1 - 1.5 hr) and clean up (1 hr). The setup and clean up could have gone faster, but I was on my own there.

- magno