Cleaner/Sanitizer Combo for DIY Copper Bottle Washer

[daedalus12]

I've read other people's posts about making their own bottle washers for use with a pump. Some of them said they wished they'd used copper instead of plastic, so I went ahead and soldered up a rig for cleaning twelve 22oz bottles.

I've been using this 1/3 HP submersible pump, which has plenty of flow.

So far, my process has been:
- Recirculate PBW with the pump for 10 minutes
- Hook up garden hose for a ~1 minute rinse
- Hand pump StarSan into each bottle with a vinator

It's actually still quite a bit of hassle.

Two questions:

1. So far I've been wary using the pump for the final step, since it's not food safe. Since most of the liquid drips out anyway, is this a reasonable concern? I could use a low-foam sanitizer like Saniclean with the pump as the final step to save some time.

2. Is there a simpler process? Considering substituting a no-rinse cleaner like OneStep or EasyClean as the only step; I realize they don't technically/legally meet the requirements for a sanitizer, but the inverted spraying creates tons of agitation and the bottles will be filled with beer that already has alcohol & active yeast present. Do folks think I can get away with that?

I know I know, just switch to kegging already. But I'm stuck with bottling for a variety of reasons, so might as well make it less painful.

Note: moved from "Equipment/Sanitation" section.

 

[BeardedBrews]

I have friends who have been using 1-step on their bottles for years without issue, I'd imagine it will work well for you too. On the pump side, I would get a clean bucket of very hot water, and just run that until the water is cold. Have a taste of the water and if it seems off, perhaps consider a different pump.

It's strictly vanity, but if you ran that bottle washer in a tub of StarSan it would shine right up for you!


To your question of hassle, I think your existing process is about as simple as you can get... you can change to a one-step, but I don't think it will feel like you're saving much time. You could put a tee and some valves on the washer inlet so the hose and pump can both be hooked up, that would save you un-screwing everything when it was time to rinse.

One of the easiest approaches I've seen involves rinsing your bottles clean as you drink them and then running them all in the dishwasher on the sanitize cycle when it's time to bottle again. You could leave one of these on the utility sink http://www.northernbrewer.com/jet-bottle-washer and then store the bottles neck-down in crates under the sink.

 

[RTL]

I haven't bothered making a thread about it yet but the bottle washer I made hooks up in my dishwasher. I remove the top rack and in the back, where it's water source is I slide my 1" tubing over it with and clamp. I also take out the bottom impeller and have 3/8" tubing that I press fit into its source hole. I made it too big (holds 36 bottles) so flow wasn't great. I clamped down 12 of the spigots and run it with 24 which works great. I would imagine you could do the same with yours. Just remove top rack and throw it in the dishwasher. With only 12 bottles you could probably get away with using just the top rack water source. I throw a small scoop of PBW in the bottom of the dishwasher start it and walk away for about 1.5 hours and come back to spotless bottles.

If you want to sanitize after all that you could just pour 10-20mL of saniclean in the bottom of the dishwasher and run the rinse cycle. I did that with iodophor once which stained the inside of the dishwasher yellow. The wife was really happy about that.

P.S. My wife really hates it when I take the dishwasher apart to do it so I wait until I have a bunch of bottles I need to clean then I just make a day out of it. That is also why I wanted to be able to run 36 at a time but that didn't turn out.

What'd that thing cost you? That's a lot of copper. Mine is PVC, I wish I had used CPVC.

 

[daedalus12]

Good idea on running hot water through to check for affecting taste! I'll give that a shot. Still won't know if its a long-term health risk, but I'll at least know if it's screwing with the taste of my beer!

The dishwasher ideas sound awesome, but unfortunately I don't live at a place that has one...

The main reason a single step would save time is that switching the bottles on and off is tricky; the copper is soft enough that the posts tend to deform if the bottles aren't lined up perfectly. It takes a bit of wrestling to drop a full FastRack on. If I'm doing 4 cases for a 10 gal batch for three separate steps, it involves changing the racks 10 times (not 12, cause I can leave one on when switching). Using a single step would bring it down to 4 changes.

If people have been using OneStep without issue, I'll try that for a while and see how it works out.

The roll-up of copper parts was:

Qty.	Description			 	 Unit 	 Total	Source
12 	1/4" Copper Cap 			$0.39	 $4.68  SuppyHouse
12	3/4" x 3/4" x 1/4" CxCxC Tee		$2.26	$27.12  SuppyHouse
 4 	3/4" Copper 90° Elbow 			$0.79	 $3.16  SuppyHouse
 3 	3/4" CxCxC Tee				$1.49 	 $4.47  SuppyHouse
 1	1/4 in. OD x 10 ft. Copper Pipe	        $9.41    $9.41  Home Depot
 1	3/4" x 60" Copper Pipe		       $13.71   $13.71  Home Depot

                                                  TOTAL $62.55

There was also about another $15 of hose fittings & food safe hoses, I'll try and do a full how-to, write-up and bill of materials when I get everything set up the way I like.

Honestly if I'd realized how much it would all add up to, might have sucked it up and bought the commercial version, but this I think will last much longer.