Hey so im going to begin bottling in the next few days. Can i wash my bottles tonight and let them dry on the counter? I'm just worried about contamination. They would be sitting on the kitchen counter in my apartment for aprox. 48 hours.
One last piece of advice tonight - 48 hours is a perfect opportunity to use our friend, Bleach. Star san, Diversal (pink powder) both use bleach as the main ingredient. I find Star san too expensive, so I use Diversol when I need very tough cleaning, or plain unscented bleach for normal cleaning/sanitizing. Either of these 2, when put 1 tablespoons per gallon of water, will do the trick. Then on bottle day simply dump and pump full of water to clean the solution out. You can even do it one week early.
Yesterday it took 2 or more hours to fill up about 50 two litre bottles with solution (yes I actually had four batches to bottle). Today, during the time waiting when racking from carboy to the priming bucket, I dumped the solution out of the 11 bottles, rinsed with a jet of hot water then cold, set them in place and the first racking just finished. So bottling about 88 litres (four carboys) took a total of five hours, including spilling a bottle over the entire floor. Starting out can sometimes take 5 hours for a single carboy.
Check these handy faucet attachments out to clean out the solution for certain:
http://www.antonco.com/jetcarboy/
A small amount of $$ will save hundreds of hours washing and now you don't need that expensive "no rinse" sanitizer that the gov't recommends to control your thoughts and subdue you.
ive only bottled once, but i soaked a bunch of used bottles (after rinsing with water) in star san to remove labels.
I'll never use anything but starsan... its so easy, and theres no rinsing. and foam is ok to leave in your containers and all
Really if you bottle 20 times or more you'll start thinking about cost. Seems like noone except US folk and Afghanis think about cost nowadays, everyone is rolling in cash right? If you are NOT rolling in it, consider bleach as there is only a single drawback, you must wash it all off before you use the container. That's about it.
You should sanitize on bottling day. It only takes a few minutes. If you let a no-rinse, wet contact sanitizer like starsan or iodophor, dry your are reducing it's efficacy by half. If it is dry, any micro organisms that touch the surface render it no longer sanitized. If the walls are wet with sanitizer, that organism would be toast. But dry it would still be alive.
Here's a lot of bottling tips to make the job easier. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/bottling-tips-homebrewer-94812/
Star San really isn't that expensive. It's $16 for a bottle that should last you a year or two. That's less than a dollar a month, and it's much easier to use than bleach.
How about just running the previously rinsed bottles through the dishwasher? That would be easy. Keep the jet dry and detergent out and run a high heat full wash cycle with sanitize high heat rinse and heated dry. Then bottle right away.
Enter your email address to join: