Need Cleaning and Sanitizing Advice

[NigeltheBold]

To clean my bottles, I usually just rinse them really well and leave them on the bottle tree until bottling day. The water usually gets the sediment and crud out of the bottles pretty well. Then on bottling day, I sanitize using StarSan and then fill and cap the bottles.

Is this a good enough cleaning/sanitizing method? Or do I need a better cleaning step using oxi-clean or another powder cleaner?

The only reason I ask is because one of my recent batches had bacteria in the bottles, and I'm wondering where I went wrong. I usually clean my equipment using dish soap (rinsing really well afterwards). Should I clean the equipment using a better cleanser?

 

[GodsStepBrother]

I have never used dish washing soap to clean. I just soak everything in oxi clean or any other cleaner of that short. I rinse my bottles and leave them upside down in a box, then before I sanitize them I run hot water through all of them one last time then sanitize.

You should be fine as long as you rinse the bottles right after you poor a beer, might also not want to leave them on the bottling tree till bottling day. You could have some dust and anything in the air go in them.

Also try switching up your sanitizer in between batches so you do not have a microbe that evolves to be resilient to one. I usually use bleach in between batches just to make sure the equipment is as clean as possible. Make sure and rinse really well with hot water if you use bleach, then hit it again with star san or whatever your sanitizer of choice is.

Pay a lot of attention to sanitizing the inside of the tubing and auto siphon those are the places bacteria can hide out the easiest.

 

[wolfman_48442]

Oxi clean is so cheap and works so well, you'd be crazy to use anything else for cleaning, in my opinion.
And GodsStepBrother is 100% correct.

 

[a_shorething]

<snip>

Pay a lot of attention to sanitizing the inside of the tubing and auto siphon those are the places bacteria can hide out the easiest.

This.

The bottles may be the issue, but if you're not disassembling your racking equipment and really soaking/cleaning it this may be your issue.

I think a good cleaning and star-san soak before you bottle is probably ensuring that your bottles are good.


PS- I recommend kegging instead of bottling. No more bottling issues.

 

[NigeltheBold]

Thanks for the help. I think I may purchase some Oxiclean Free and soak the bottles/equipment in-between bottling sessions. Then I'll thoroughly soak bottles and equipment in Starsan right before bottling.