Critique My Bottle Procedure

[pr0cess]

Feel free to say 'keg it' but I don't have the money or space just yet so I will ignore those responses

Basically the biggest hassle in brewing has been maintaining the temp where I want it for fermentation, but a REAL close second is the pre-bottling process. I read the stickey and adapted some of it to make actual bottling less of a headache but the cleaning and sanitizing is a chore. It takes more than 2 hours to get ready to bottle, I guess that is good it lets everything undesireable settle in the bottling bucket but still...

I am looking for ideas to speed the following process:

1: Drink beer from a store bought bottle (the easy part) rinse at least 3 times and swirl to get the leftovers out.

2: Soak the bottle overnight to remove the label.

(This is where it gets hectic)

3: Scrub the whole outside to get off residual glue and spit or whatever came out of my mouth off from around the mouth of the bottle, rinse well including the inside again in case suds got in. Put this outside-clean bottle on an unsanitized bottle tree until dry then put the bottles into the closet until needed.

(Bottling Day)

4: Get three 5 gallon buckets ready in stools in the kitchen (to make them comfortable work height). Bucket 1 has 5 gallons of C-Brite, Bucket 2 has 5 gallons of water, Bucket 3 has 5 gallons of Idophor mixed to label specifications for homebrew use.

5: Haul out as many bottles as will fit on my bottle tree (54 I think but its at home and I'm not) and the bottle tree, disassemble the tree and soak it in the cleanser and then rinse in the water and soak in the sanitizer, reassemble the whole thing while wearing gloves that I have sat in the sanitizer.

6: Repeat the tree process with the bottles with an addition scrubbing while they sit in the cleanser. I do 6 bottles at a time; soak in cleanser, scrub, drain, soak in water, drain, soak in Idophor for at least 4 minutes, drain, transfer to bottle tree, repeat.

I usually change out the water about halfway through, and once I had to remix some Idophor as it lost its happy brown color (exceptionally nasty bottles?)

Specific Questions:

Is there a good rinse free cleanser? Is there a cleanser so powerful you don't have to scrub? Am I being too anal? Not anal enough? Should I just get over it and deal? Anything else?

-dylan

 

[GaryJohn]

Ok, I've only brewed 3 batched myself, but I'll tell you what I do, its much easier.

1. Rinse out bottles after use and let 'em dry.

2. Soak in a bucket of oxiclean and water overnight..the next day the labels just fall off and you can wipe any residual glue off with your bare hand...or a paper towel if its really "stubborn". Usually I don't have to even do that. Then I rinse the bottles again, and store for when they are needed.

3. Bottling day! Put all the bottles in the dishwasher, top-down, on a hot cycle with NO SOAP. The steam/heat completely sanitizes them and rinses them again for good measure. (I actually run the dishwasher empty with no soap first, to make sure there is no residual soap anywhere in there, then run it again with the bottles in.) The bottles come out squeaky clean and sanitized! I can fit 5 gallons worth of bottles in my dishwasher in 1 go all at once. So easy!

4. While the dishwasher's going, I sanitize my other equipment and boil priming sugar.

5. Put sugar water into a clean, sanitized Ale Pail that I used the ferment the beer several weeks ago. Siphon beer from carboy into the bucket with the sugar water.

6. When the dishwasher is done, I open it a bit to let the bottles cool/dry off.

7. Put Ale Pail with primed beer on the dishwasher, open the dishwasher door and use it as a tray, and siphon beer from the bucket into the bottles with a bottling wand. Cap 'em and wipe down the bottles as needed!

It's still a bit of a process, but it seems a lot easier than what you are doing. Hope you have a dishwasher, and hope this helps!! Or at least gives you some ideas...

 

[giligson]

+1 on g2knees response. The dishwasher is your friend. If you dont have a dishwasher then soak for a few minutes in a no rinse sanitizer like starsan. As for the bottle tree - if you clean it once and rinse it off after then there is really no need to ever clean or sanitize it again. Remember this is a "clean" procedure its not really "sterile" - you don't need gloves to protect the beer, only your hands if you have sensitive skin or are using a harsh cleaner.

 

[Quan]

I think you're being too anal. I think alot of talk on these forums and all around the internet make a bigger deal out of sanitation than is necessary. That said, I still think it's very important but it's just not as easy to get an infection as people make it out to be.

For me, I pretty much just use OneStep for everything... As long as stuff touches it, I'm fine. I have yet to get any infections. When I sanatize my bottles, I don't use gloves, fill the bottles with OneStep, let sit for a minute, drain them, place them on a sanitized rack.... done. For my kegs, I just fill it with OneStep, pump some out through the lines, dump.... done. For my carboys, dump OneStep in, shake it around, dump it out... done.

The reason I went to a much more relaxed approach is because I watched a couple friends of mine brew batches and holy crap were they unsanitary. The more extreme example was a guy who used a burnt, unwashed, flexible silicon baking sheet as a funnel and the grainbag that had been sitting in the sink (with dirty dishes) as his strainer. His bottling process? Even worse. Anyway, only a few of his bottles ended up getting infected. What this told me is that yes, infections can occur... but it takes ALOT of negligence to get it to happen.

I'm not sure if it's true, but one thing that gives me solace is this: Think if you took a sample off of some of your equipment and threw it into a petri dish, would you be able to grow bacteria off of it? Probably not... it's relatively clean. Even if you did, it'd probably be minimal. Now pour beer on top of that petri dish and see if that bacteria grows... probably even less likely with the alcohol and stuff...

To me, it sounds like you can tone it down quite a bit and you'd still be fine.

 

[TipsyDragon]

i think your way over doing things. i would buy the beer and drink it. right after i pour it into a glass i rinse the bottles. fill half way, put my hand over the mouth of the bottle and shake. do this a couple times. then let soak over night in some water and dawn. others use OxyClean. then if needed i use a green scrubby to get the glue off. it should come right off with a minimal of effort. on bottling day i throw them in the dishwasher with no soap and the heat dry on. this will sanitize and clean your bottles. while thats going on i measure and boil the corn sugar. let it cool while the bottles are cleaning and sanitizing. once the bottles are ready i pour the sugar water into the bottling bucket. then rack the beer on top of it. next i hook up a sanitized hose to the spigot and bottling wand and bottle as normal. i fill and my friend caps. the actual manual part of the process takes maybe an hour.

 

[Ichthy]

I used to bleach, rinse, and dry my bottles before bottling and it took wayyy to long.

Here is what I do:
-rinse bottles well
-soak and delabel if needed
-sit bottle on shelf in basement for future use
-when i get about 2-3 cases i put a small foil cap (that i reuse) on the bottles (remember the bottles are rinsed and dried)
-i put 2-3 cases of foil capped bottles in the oven, set it to 350 and walk away for 2 1/2 hours.
-let bottles cool
- you now have 2-3 cases of bottles that are sterilized and will stay so as long as you leave the cap on
-it takes about 15 min to cap and load the bottles in the oven
- when it's time to bottle, rack and prime the beer
- as i fill a bottle i lay a sanitized bottle cap on the beer i just filled
-once i have a case filled I cap them and wipe them down with a wet rag as they go into a box.
-you are done and cleaned up in 30-45 min depending on how much help you have

 

[throwbookatface]

Can I ask why you're doing C-brite, then unsanitized water, then Iodophor? Seems like one step forward, one step back, then one step forward again. Just use C-brite then air dry on your bottle rack like the producers recommend, or if you want to skip the drying step completely switch to StarSan, where you can rack onto the foam. You can probably even load up a spray bottle with your sanitizer and spray down your tree beforehand so you don't have to take it apart.

The no-soap dishwasher method others recommended also seems great.

 

[pr0cess]

C-Brite to clean, chunks and crusties (if any including ones too small to see) then unsanitized water because C-Brite is a rinse sanitizer and Idophor to sanitize after being rinsed, to get the microscopic thingies. My understanding from a medical background is that Cleaning is a more mechanical process and sterilization is a more chemical one, two different tasks.

StarSan is the foamy right? I read about it but my LHBS doesn't carry it and I haven't gotten around to sourcing from the web just yet. It seems like that is the best bet.

The dishwasher would be great if I had one but I live out in the high desert and we are overly water conservationally minded.

I liked the idea of baking them but on hot summer days boy do I not like running my oven for 2.5 hrs.

Seems like getting StarSan and a sprayer might be the way to go. Time to fire up that "stuff I can't get local" list. Does StarSan clean AND sanitize? And is it generally prepared in a bucket and dunked?

-dylan.

 

[throwbookatface]

As far as cleaning goes, anything works. People use Oxyclean, dish soap, the dishwasher, etc. As long as you thoroughly get everything off and don't leave behind any residue (I know Jet Dry leaves a chemical residue that tastes terribly and ruins head retention on beer) I think you're good. I know people like OxyClean because it lessens manual scrubbing, especially on bottles, but I just use dish soap as soon as I drink a bottle and I don't have to worry about dried beer residue later.

For sanitation: The instructions on C-brite don't say to rinse - it says to air dry. Per package and instructions on their web site:

SANITIZATION: No-rinse effective sanitization requires a solution of 100 ppm available chlorine. This will be achieved by dissolving the contents of an 0.8 ounce packet of C-Brite in 2 gallons of warm water. Thoroughly wet all surfaces to be sanitized. Let stand at least one minute. Drain and AIR DRY.

http://www.fallbright.com/newsc_brite.htm

You can use C-brite in a sprayer too. Star-San works pretty similarly - prepare a solution in a bowl or bucket. Star-San will foam up when agitated, for example, shaking it in a bottle or bucket. Though Star-San is the best bet since you don't have to even wait for it to dry (it contains nutrients that actually help yeast grow) C-brite is still a pretty versatile no-rinse sanitizer. I know a lot of people disagree with chlorine in beer, but as long as you don't overdo it (drain your buckets/bottles) or let it dry, you should be ok.

 

[Quan]

OneStep is a .... one step... cleaner/sanitizer... and you don't have to rinse it out. Might wanna try that.

 

[throwbookatface]

Good call. StarSan and OneStep are the most convenient! If you wanna stick to your C-brite until you run out, though, you can still simplify your process a lot. Especially in cleaning - once you don't see any crusties or residue, you're clean, and ready to sanitize later.

You can also forget the gloves - C-brite and StarSan (and I think OneStep) are pretty mild, so I'll just spray my hands a bit too when assembling the drying rack or handling tools.

 

[bsdx]

If C-brite is like Straight-A (probably), I never used to specifically rinse it off before I dunked my bottles in iodaphor mixed to 12.5ppm. At 12.5ppm it should be no rinse and I think any small amount left in the bottle is probably not detectable. I always look through my beer bottle for nasties and try to rinse them after using, brushing sucks and I try to use bottles that "look clean" and use a good cleaner to clean what I can't see. When I'm feeling stubborn about using bottles that were not rinsed well I'll use the brush. I mix up 20g of cleaner in a 26g tub (deep enough that I can submerge a whole batch of bottles standing up so I don't get bubbles trapped inside), drop the bottles in which half sink on their own, hold them upright until they sink and let the cleaner do its job. Then I pull two out at a time and swirl them to get the water out faster, repeat previous steps with iodaphor tub. Then I take them out of the sanitizer and put them in crates. This might not work for you if you need to conserve water but you could use smaller tubs and/or bottle multiple batches in one sitting. I give the bottles one last shake upside down before filling if I remember. Never had a bottle tree until recently but I need to give it a good cleaning before I start. Somewhere I think I read that the cleaner should be rinsed off well before putting it in star-san so I added the water rinse step to mine. I've bottled over 20 batches and all the bottles came out the same.