sanitation & cleaning questions

[bru-ster76]

Hi,

I'm getting ready to start my first brew and am acquiring my supplies. Hoping to place an order today. I'm wondering about cleaning and sanitation of bottles.

Is the best practice to rinse the beer bottles immediately after use, clean the bunch with brew wash and then on the bottling day, do the final sanitation?

What's the general consensus on this?

 

[unionrdr]

Order some PBW & Starsan along with your kit. Fivestar Chemical makes some great stuff for home brewing. Get a cheap digital scale too. Walmart for $20. When I buy beer for ther pop top bottles,& rinse them out & soak'em in PBW solution (1.5oz to 1 gallon water) in a small old 12 pack cooler I have left over from my workin man days. The labels usually float off overnight,& the glue dissolves or gets really soft.
Then rinse'em well & I put them on my bottle tree fitted with a vinator on top. The vinator comes in handy half filled with Starsan on bottling day. Filled with bottles,the tree has a footprint of about 2 square feet. Better than kneeling on the floor with bottles all over the place. Mine holds 45 bottles,with an average 5 gallon batch being 48. Sometimes more,like yesterday I got 53 bottles of Berlin Wheat out of a 5G batch.
But the bottle tree & vinator really safe space & time during bottling day.
Also,if you're going to use plastic buckets (Ale Pail & the like),then get a lid removal tool. You pry those pesky tight lids off with it. I also have a dollar store rubber mallet for installing said lids without beatin up my hands.
Bed,Bath & Beyond has a SS collander for $9 that just fits the top of my 4 & 5 gallon kettles nicely. Handy for draining & sparging grains.
Just a couple more things that make brewin/bottling easier & quicker.

 

[bru-ster76]

Sounds good. thanks for the info.

A friend who brews gave me a bottle tree and vinator. They need a good cleaning, but will do just fine. I assume I should take the tree apart and clean it, plus soak it in Starsan on bottling day.

 

[unionrdr]

Just try to keep it clean. Maybe spray the pegs with Starsan & you're good to go. You don't have to take it apart to clean it. Maybe the vinator though.
Good score,those two items really make bottling day quicker & easier.

 

[woozy]

Pretty much... You can clean a bottle at any time in any way you wish. The only really concern is making it easy on yourself. Rinsing immediately prevents crud crusting up. Because bottle necks are hard to get into, soaking them in cleaner for some time is the most thorough way to get them really clean.

I'm sure many have tips and systems that work for them.

I might be a bit inefficient myself. Bottle cleaning isn't hard. It's a little tedious if you let it build up. Whatever system you adopt you'll just want to make sure you don't allow slip-shod bottles to slip in. I kind of soak em and clean em when I feel like it as the days between bottle day go by in a perpetual mellow. But I have boxes reserved in my closet for thoroughly clean ones and I don't let any bottles go in there unless I know they are and have been very well rinsed.

 

[bru-ster76]

Perfect. thanks for the tips.