Old, mildewy bottles

[DARK]

Hi folks,

Does anybody know of a good bottle brush which doesn't lose its shape? I have a lot of old returnable coke bottles which were given to me by my father-in-law. He had saved them when he attempted brewing in the late 1970s. Unfortunately, he never washed the coke out, so most of them are extremely moldy. A few of them have dessicated cockroaches in them. I'm looking for a bottle brush with extremely stiff bristles which I can use to get all the crap out of these bottles so they can be used again. The brushes I've got do not get the bottom of the bottles very well. Any advice is appreciated.

-DARK

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Soak in oxiclean overnight and you'll be able to get that stuff out easily.

I haven't seen any really stiff bristled brush that can fit in a bottle.

 

[mizzoueng]

There are bottle brushes out there. Go to your LHBS and they should have one

http://www.northernbrewer.com/sanitizers.html

NB has bottle brushes for 2.95. These shouldn't lose their shape very fast, but if you are looking for a nylon or teflon like brush, nto sure there.

 

[Moonpile]

I will second the idea of oxyclean. Get an $8 keg tub at Walmart. Fill the bottles with hot water and stand them up in the keg tub. Sprinkle oxyclean powder, making an attempt to get some into each bottle. Then fill the tub with hot water and let it soak for an hour or more.

Use a bottle brush and bottle sprayer to clean.

I had bottles that had been in my basement with funky left over beer and in which camel crickets had made their last abode. Some seriously nasty stuff came floating up out of those bottles when I followed the procedure above.

The $8 keg tub will be handy for many, many other things. We fill it up with sanitizer at the beginning of each session, for example.

 

[runhard]

Oxyclean is cheaper than PBW and works well but if some the bottles prove to be difficult then PBW will do the job. I inherited about 100 ceramic flip-top bottles in the same state as your soda bottles and 160°F water and a PBW soak did the trick. No scrubbing required but the stuff ain't cheap.

 

[Barley-Davidson]

Everybody's on the money with soaking them first.
If you still need to use a brush, I read about someone who cut the loop off the end of a bottle brush so he could attach it to a cordless drill.
If you need to do some scrubbing that might speed things up some.

 

[Foreigner]

A small length of thin chain inserted into the bottle and shaken like mad will take the place of a brush :rockin: