Cleaning/Sanitation

[joeyuwp]

Just tasted my first brew and it seems to have a funky flavor to it. I'm suspecting that I didn't sanitize well enough. Does anyone have a solid procedure for cleaning/sanitizing bottles and equipment? I'm anxious to start my next batch but want it to turn out right.

 

[SteveM]

This works for me:

I rinse the heck out of them once I empty them before putting them away.

The when I am getting ready to fill them, I rinse the heck out of them again, then run them through the dishwasher. No detergent is really necessary, but sometimes I have put some bleach in, like a cup or so. I have no idea if this makes a difference.

Then, just as I am about to fill them, I sanitize the bucket I use for filling with three or four gallons of hot water and the appropriate amount of no-rinse sanitizer. I dunk every bottle in this, fill them, shake out all the water again back into the bucket, and then (even though it is "no rinse") I rinse them again.

(I just don't believe that any sanitizer is really no rinse - call me crazy.)

I put aside about a half gallon of sanitizer solution in a big bowl and I rinse by capper in it and repeat from time to time while capping, and keep all my caps in it until I am ready to use.

I have never had a problem, but on the other hand, I have only done six batches so I don't have a great depth of experience.

 

[Sasquatch]

I've been happy with making up about a cup of really strong sanitizing solution, and pouring it in a bottle. With rubber gloves on, I shake the hell out of it for about 30 seconds, then pour into the next bottle, and let the first stand. Continue until all bottles are done and have sanitizer residue in em. Then, you need to rinse each bottle 3 times. Just a little water, like a couple tablespoons, swirled and shaken around, and dumped. 3 times. Now you have sanitized rinsed bottles and are ready to go. (if you are using a chlorine based sanitizer, rinse until you can't smell chlorine - but 3 should do it) For the caps, I just put them in a bucket with a bunch of sanitizer, and swirl em around and let them sit while I'm doing the bottles. Then I rinse the whole bucket out 3 or four times with hot water. Then as I'm bottling, I just grap a cap with each bottle.

The idea is to work reasonably quickly - everything stays wet, but the bottles have an exposed time after sanitizing of maximum 20 minutes, before they are full and capped.

I keep a bucket of sanitizing solution around, so I can constantly dip my gloves in and rinse and keep clean that way. I run the autosiphon in the bucket, pumping solution through, and all funnels, air-locks etc get treated in there too, depending on what stage of the brew I'm at.

 

[SteveM]

Re-reading this, I see I only mentioned bottles and you also asked about equipment.

I use the big white plastic tubs, the kind that look like joint compound containers. As I mentioned in passing above, before use, I fill them with three or four gallons of hot water and with a clean sponge, I wipe down everything inside and around the rim. This seems to suffice for the brew tank.

For the tank I tap from, I first take apart the tap and put all the pieces into a bowl of hot sanitizing solution. Then I close the tap and install it into the tub, and repeat the process described in the paragraph above. Besides sanitizing the bottles at this time, I also immerse all tubes, siphons, the pressure valve and so on, and make sure the solution flows completely through them.