newbie bottling question

Hey guys. I'm finishing up my first brew and so far things seem to be going well. I plan on bottling next week sometime and have all bottles, caps, ect.. that i need to bottle. I'm just wondering what the best way to clean/sanitize them would be. I rinsed out all the bottles that I drank from and planned on cleaning them somehow. Should I just start by putting them in the dishwasher without soap? A bleach solution? Just use my no rinse cleaner? Any info or input from you guys would be great. I just want this first brew to turn out decent. Thanks for the help.

If you're going to use your dishwasher to sanitize bottles, just toss the caps in the silverware holder and do 'em with the bottles. Otherwise, you can toss some no-rinse sanitizer over them in a clean bowl.

If you use the dishwasher, you need to select the sanitize or heated dry cycle. (It's the heat that does the sanitizing, not the water.)
Also, make sure there is no jet-dry in the dishwasher as this is a wetting agent that will destroy the head of the beer.

If you use bleach, it will need a long soak followed by a thorough rinsing. Of course, the rinse water could introduce infections, but this is unlikely.

IMO, a mild detergent and a bottle brush followed by a good rinse should take care of the cleaning, and a quick soak in a no-rinse sanitizer such as Iodophor or Starsan should take care of the sanitizing.

Good luck.

-a.

I'm not speaking from experience, but i was just pretty much gonna throw my beer bottles in the dishwasher 40 bottles at a time. I have a bottle tree to dry them.

I think the neck of the bottles are too small to allow any efficient cleaning in the dishwasher. As mentioned above, it would be the heat, not the water/detergent sanitizing them. I just use bleach, and a bottle brush if necessary. Be sure to rinse well.

The dish washer is for sanitising rather than cleaning.

I'm a traditionalist in the bottling area- I spent way too much time and money on my brew to not finish the job properly. My bottles are cleaned in advance (usually by rinsing thoroughly when used, and no one's lips EVER touch my bottles!) and then sanitized with no rinse sanitizer before bottling. The caps are soaked in sanitizer. There has been much debate on this forum about dishwasher for sanitizing, but I'm still sticking with the proven way. I only would use bleach if I had mold or something in the bottles, and then I would probably just discard that bottle.

I've never had an infection, a gusher, or any other issues. So, this works for me!

I use a no-rinse santizer, I mix it up in my bottling bucket then sanitize my bottles and other equipment, the bucket gets santized in the process. The dishwasher makes a nice drying rack for the bottles, then I bottle them with the bucket on the counter above the dishwasher, the door open and fill each bottle on the open dishwasher door. Makes a nice platform and clean up is as simple as closing the dishwasher door (you will spill some!).

I saw a guy on youtube use a wallpaper tray to do his sanitizing. I'm trying that out next time. He stuck a bunch of bottles in at a time on their sides and then took them out...no shaking needed, he just rolled them in tray filled with san solution. Then put his siphoning equip in the same way.....coiled up. It gets throughout this way and uses minimal effort and sanitizer.

Like others have said so far....as soon as the bottles are poured into a glass rinse very well and then there is no need to scrub, just sanitize when time to use them again.

orfy said:

The dish washer is for sanitising rather than cleaning.

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I found this out the hard way. I'd read about using the dishwasher for sanitizing and said, "that's a great idea". For my first batch I got in a hurry and put dirty bottles in the dishwasher to get cleaned and sanitized. I had to pour several bottles of beer down the drain because they had things floating in them. Yuck!!! Anyway, now I soak them in hot water and oxyclean (removes labels really well) and run a bottle brush inside each one. I still use the dishwasher to sanitize (on the sanitizor cycle) and haven't had a problem since.

Kayos said:

I saw a guy on youtube use a wallpaper tray to do his sanitizing. I'm trying that out next time. He stuck a bunch of bottles in at a time on their sides and then took them out...no shaking needed, he just rolled them in tray filled with san solution. Then put his siphoning equip in the same way.....coiled up. It gets throughout this way and uses minimal effort and sanitizer.

Like others have said so far....as soon as the bottles are poured into a glass rinse very well and then there is no need to scrub, just sanitize when time to use them again.

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Cool, first time I was generically referred to. I think that's my bottling vid.

Is there a quicker way to get the sanitizer solution INTO the bottle? I hate waiting for the "glub-glub-glub" until the bottle fills with sanitizer and sinks to the bottom. Seems to take ages.

Do you guys fill them all the way up with sanitizer? or just enough to swirl around and empty?

You could get one of those bowl style bottle sanitizers. You fill it with about 2 quarts of solution and pump the bottle on it upside down and it squirts sanitzer up into the bottle. The idea is that you just need to coat the inside a couple times. The only reason I didn't buy this thing is because I'm building up my keg system and plan to abandon mass bottling.

I always clean the bottle right after they are used to keep mold from forming. I boil the bottles for 10 minutes before bottling. I let them cool first before filling. I do allot of canning and a 10-minute boil kills everything. It's not that mush more work and I have peace of mind.

Mutine Bullfrog said:

I always clean the bottle right after they are used to keep mold from forming. I boil the bottles for 10 minutes before bottling. I let them cool first before filling. I do allot of canning and a 10-minute boil kills everything. It's not that mush more work and I have peace of mind.

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Yeah, I also clean the bottles right after they are poured. How many batches of boiling do you end up doing? How long does the whole process take? I use either a soak in iodophor or the dishwasher. Never had a problem.

KingC said:

Hey guys. I'm finishing up my first brew and so far things seem to be going well. I plan on bottling next week sometime and have all bottles, caps, ect.. that i need to bottle. I'm just wondering what the best way to clean/sanitize them would be. I rinsed out all the bottles that I drank from and planned on cleaning them somehow. Should I just start by putting them in the dishwasher without soap? A bleach solution? Just use my no rinse cleaner? Any info or input from you guys would be great. I just want this first brew to turn out decent. Thanks for the help.

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I started a thread about this about three months ago, might have some good information: Great sanitation idea