OK to sanitize bottling bucket/bottles with bleach or something?

Hi all! I ran out of no rinse cleanser and planned on having my friends over tomorrow to bottle, so no time to order more (I don't live near a homebrew store).

Will I be OK sanitizing my bottling bucket / siphon / bottles with a mixture of bleach and water? Should I rinse? Would something else I can buy at a drugstore work better? Thanks!!!

This is all I ever do. Bleach works very well at a tbls per gallon. I do buckets, carboys, bottles, tubes, siphons, airlocks... Everything I can. Bleach is always handy but have been told vodka will suffice as well.

Bleach will work fine and you'll defiantly want to do a fresh water rinse. I've done the rinse two ways and didn't notice any difference. First, sanitize with bleach and soaked for 5 minutes, then ran the tap and rinsed thoroughly. Second, sanitize with bleach and soaked for 5 minutes, then dunked into a five gallon bucket of clean bottled water as my rinse.

I use bleach for my fermenters, and hoses. I store my fermenters filled with bleach.

BUT ..... it was because of using bleach to sanitize bottles that I think I eventually stopped brewing for 7 years. You can sanitize bottles with bleach, but it is a pain. A no-rinse sanitizer makes things much easier.

To use bleach:

- Fill a bucket with water (probably the bottling bucket) and add about 1 tablespoon of bleach per gallon.

- Submerge bottles. Not sure for how long. 5 minutes might be fine (do some research). I used to use several buckets and soak overnight.

- Rinse the bottles with HOT water. Run a few ounces in the bottles, swirl it around, pour it out, and then repeat. Bleach forms a film on the surface, and cold water will not get rid of it; you need to use hot water. Hot tap water is fine.

Great, thanks a bunch guys! I thought I was screwed!

I always make sure I've got starsan & PBW on hand. The smal bottle of starsan has lasted me 2 years & counting.

unionrdr said:

I always make sure I've got starsan & PBW on hand. The smal bottle of starsan has lasted me 2 years & counting.

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Same here for the starsan. 2 years, 9+ batches, no infections, and still have near 1/2 the bottle! I use distilled water and keep the gallon jugs in the basement. Just started using PBW, and in a half hour soak, it cleaned my carboy SPOTLESS! I'm sold!

I like star-san because I know I can siphon on top of the foam and not worry. No rinsing is needed at all when used at the 1oz/5gal ratio

I've been using bleach for my fermenters for a while but always use a no rinse sanitiser for my bottles forgive me if I'm wrong but I read somewhere it was better to rinse bleach smell out with cold water so this is what I've been doing for ages with no problems. Any final says on cold vs hot water when rinsing bleach?