Dishwasher with no Soap

Does anyone else do this? Cause it seems to me those things get so damn hot in there that they are completely and utterly clean. Just curious

I have done it for about 15 brews with no ill effects at all. Those bottles come out of there so hot you can't touch them. I always make sure to put it on the heated dry cycle just to be safe. I also clean them all very thoroughly before putting them in there. I use it only as a sanitation device, not a cleaning one.

I've never used my dishwasher for sanitation, but it does have a sticker on it claiming it will sanitize dishes if you set your water heater at a certain temp. and choose this option.

you can definately use your dishwasher to sanitize bottles. You just need enough heat and bottles that are already clean.

You can NOT use the dishwasher to clean the bottles, because there is no way for the water/cleaner to get up inside of the bottles.

Honestly, though... my opinion is that it will cost more and take a longer amount of time to sanitize in the dishwasher than to sanitize with a no-rinse solution (be it diluted bleach, starsan, iodophor, whatever).

-walker

Countdown to food-grade guy...5...4...3...

The other thing that's nice about the dishwasher, if you don't have a bottle tree, is that they can stay upright in an environment you've just sanitized while you bottle. I do tend to do a quick rinse and then use the dishwasher on the sterilize cycle, I know it's redundant but then I know for certain that I'm all good.

Anyone tried putting Iodophore in the Jet-dry reservoir?

Like many of y'all already said, some washers have a sanitize cycle intended for baby bottles and such. It works equally well for grown-up bottles in my experience.

Here's another technique that a friend of mine and I have done for many, many batches:

Once you're bottles are clean (de-labled & scrubbed with either the old bottle brush or the jet bottle cleaner on the faucet), stack as many as you can in your oven, crank it up to about 225 for 30-min to an hour and let 'em bake. After that time, crack the oven to let cool air in to cool the bottles. When they're cool enough to handle, take them out and fill immediately. It's nice b/c it sanitizes your bottles and dries them out at the same time. Sometimes there's a few water droplets remaining in them, but it's sanitized too, so I just bottle away.

If you have to cook two batches b/c your stove can't hold enough bottles, take the first batch out and cover with something clean to keep airborne floaties out of your bottles. I've used paper towels and zip lock bags.

A variation on this technique that I haven't tried yet, but plan to try with my bigger batches would be to cook one batch in the oven and sanitize the other in the washer. Just like the bird says, then you've got all your bottles in a sanitary environment so when it's time to bottle, take them out and fill immediately.

the_bird said:

The other thing that's nice about the dishwasher, if you don't have a bottle tree, is that they can stay upright in an environment you've just sanitized while you bottle. I do tend to do a quick rinse and then use the dishwasher on the sterilize cycle, I know it's redundant but then I know for certain that I'm all good.

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Dishwasher sanitizing cycles (the heat dry option) steam water from the contents. I've mentioned this before. Baby bottles and beer bottles are drastically different in shape - a beer bottle's narrow neck and flared body effectively prevent a good water stream from getting in and coating the entire surface of the bottle interior - meaning that the steaming effect doesn't affect the entire bottle. This means the entire inside probably doesn't get sanitized.

If you think this works, and it's seemed to work for you in the past, go for it. Me, I don't trust it. Besides, I can sanitize an entire batch of bottles using iodophor in less time than a dishwasher cycle.

bikebryan said:

- meaning that the steaming effect doesn't affect the entire bottle. This means the entire inside probably doesn't get sanitized.

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Though the steam doesn't necessarily reach the innermost portion of the bottle, it's the temperature inside that matters. Your hot water heater and dishwasher heating element are doing the work. If you have plenty of hot water, and your dishwasher is efficient and effective at raising the temperature and maintaining it above about 170 F, then your bottles are likely to be sanitized inside and out.

Perhaps you could put a glass of water right side up in the top dishwasher rack, run the sanitize cycle, and measure the temperature water at the completion of the cycle. I bet, though, that if your bottles are too hot to touch after the same cycle, that you're in good shape.

I used the DW for a while but discovered the time savings was near nil..

I've found the dishwasher works well as a bottle drying rack. I only bottle maybe one or two batches a year, so I'm not about to buy a dedicated drying rack.

bikebryan said:

Dishwasher sanitizing cycles (the heat dry option) steam water from the contents. I've mentioned this before. Baby bottles and beer bottles are drastically different in shape - a beer bottle's narrow neck and flared body effectively prevent a good water stream from getting in and coating the entire surface of the bottle interior - meaning that the steaming effect doesn't affect the entire bottle. This means the entire inside probably doesn't get sanitized.

If you think this works, and it's seemed to work for you in the past, go for it. Me, I don't trust it. Besides, I can sanitize an entire batch of bottles using iodophor in less time than a dishwasher cycle.

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Well, the procedure is to give them a quick soak in bleached water and a rinse, then put them in the dishwasher. They are cleaned soon after being drunk, sanitized once from the bleach, then again with the heat of the sterilize cycle. I'm actually dioing one step more, methinks, than I really NEED to do. I trust the heat of the sanitize cycle to break up any bleach residue, so I don't have to stress about making sure they are 100% rinsed out. Since I don't rely on the dishwasher one iota to clean the bottles, so the reach of the water is irrelevant - it's the heat that actually does the sterilization.

I use my dishwaher only as a bottle dryer. I dunk all bottles in no-rinse, give them the ol scrub with the bottle brush and on to the top rack for drying. The key to easy bottle cleaning is simply rinsing out your bottles twice with water when you drink a beer. This completely removes the yeast cake and most of the beer from the bottle. You are doing it one at a time as well, so its not a long drawn out process.

yes, the pre drink rinse is absolutely necessary. in the beginning, i didn't do it all the time, and i ended up throwing those bottles out because cleaning them wasn't worth the effort. no matter how hard i scrubbed...

does anyone add anything to the dishwaser during the sterilization cycle? oxyclean? regular dishwashing detergent? what would be the best thing to do?

tockeyhockey said:

does anyone add anything to the dishwaser during the sterilization cycle? oxyclean? regular dishwashing detergent? what would be the best thing to do?

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Just say "NO" to dishwashing detergent. They leave a film on them that is usually the no spotting agent. Can't imagine that leaves a good taste in the beer (someone posted about it previously too).

Jason

tockeyhockey said:

yes, the pre drink rinse is absolutely necessary. in the beginning, i didn't do it all the time, and i ended up throwing those bottles out because cleaning them wasn't worth the effort. no matter how hard i scrubbed...

does anyone add anything to the dishwaser during the sterilization cycle? oxyclean? regular dishwashing detergent? what would be the best thing to do?

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To my mind, the best thing to do would be to NOT use the dishwasher, but as you've seen many folks are dead-set in their belief that it does the job. If you do it and it works for you, great. I don't trust any home unit enough.

If my unit gets hot enough to melt plastic and burn my hand if I grab something out of it right after the cycle, I'm pretty confident that it can also kill bacteria.

i used mine to rinse off the bottles and dry them after i sanitized them (thought it would be a good idea) and it made a handy bottle rack also. well i forgot i put a rinising agent in it! the bottles came out spotless and nice and clean looking and well the beer came out decent to! i dont think the rinse agent really had an affect on it though i suppose it couldnt make its way all they way up in the bottle like it has been said before in this thread lol

We have used the dish washer as a sanitizer the last two times we bottled. It has been fine.

We use One-Step in the soap dispenser, I don't know how much difference that really makes, but the thing gets plenty hot enough. We only sanitize in it, not clean.

We also make sure to remove the Jet-Dry before running the cycle.




Gedvondur

it does make a great drying rack at any rate.

It makes a great place to fill too, especially if you spill a lot because the dishwasher just closes up with the mess...

I'm all for the dishwasher method. I've drank from a commercial bottle, and put it in the dishwasher and ran it through for cleaning. Seems to work fine, I've did a pretty good visual inspection and I can't see anything. For a homebrew, I rinse them out a bit more.

I don't see any reason not to clean/sanitize in a dishwasher, if it's clean enough for me to eat off it's fine to drink beer out of. But that is only my preference and I have also considered running them through and then doing the oven bake method just to be sure.

All I can say is that I used the dishwasher for my last bottled batch and it worked fine.

I'm in the same boat as the_bird; I soaked in bleach, rinsed really well, then put them in the dishwasher for a rinse and dry cycle....

Clean bottles and no problems!

tockeyhockey said:

does anyone add anything to the dishwaser during the sterilization cycle? oxyclean? regular dishwashing detergent? what would be the best thing to do?

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I add some oxyclean if I need to get labels off. I don't if there are none to remove.

Between the heat, the hot water, and the oxyclean, most of my labels just fall right off.

butler1850 said:

I add some oxyclean if I need to get labels off. I don't if there are none to remove.

Between the heat, the hot water, and the oxyclean, most of my labels just fall right off.

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Good idea, but it seems like it would leave a nasty mess in your dishwasher.

God Emporer BillyBrew said:

Good idea, but it seems like it would leave a nasty mess in your dishwasher.

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Nope. The Oxyclean dissolves the glue, so that goes down the drain. All I have to do is pick up the labels off of the bottom when I'm done bottling.

A few of them are still stuck to bottles, but come off VERY easy, with a very slight tug.

There are a few label types (harpoon brews) that don't come off quite as easy, and require a soak prior to removal, but for Sam Adams, and most other labels, they just melt right off.