Cleaning bottles

[BeerHolic Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BeerHolic]

Cleanin bottles is a pain in the a__. No money for a keg system at this stage.

How do you clean your bottles ?. Looking for ideas to spend less time on this task.

My proccess
After drinking I give the bottle a good rinse, usually within a hour or 2 of drinking.
A couple of days before bottling I clean with a cold water detergent. I have a large round tub that can take 8 bottles at a time. Quarter fill with water and detergent, immerse bottles, shake and rinse one bottle at a time.
On bottling day repeat process with sanitiser.
Each batch is about 48 440ml bottles.
After about 4 -5 uses of a bottle, half fill with boiling water, before cleaning and sanitising.

Am I overdoing this bottle cleaning thing ?, rather safe than sorry, but a lot of work.

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

A good rinse is crucial to keeping good bottles. I usually rinse them all, and on the bottling morning I'll pack them all in their crates (12 per crate), take them outside and tackle them with the Jet function on the hosepipe spray thingy. Inside and out. I plate the nozzle inside the head of every bottle and spray a good jet of water directly down. It washes up any dust and so on. I do this 2~3 times, depending on my mood, and then I turn the bottles upside down to drain. Then it's off to the kitchen sink.

Dilute sanitiser in the kitchen sink and soak the bottles in the sink. Once out of the crate I spray the crate's whole inside with sanitiser to sanitise it. Then, one by one, I take them out, bottle brush them on the inside and hold them up to light to make sure I didn't miss a bottle in the rinsing phase (it happens, meaning there's some caked yeast in the bottom). If found, scrub. If not, rinse and place upside down in the crate. Place on a clean towel to drip-dry until bottling.

When bottling comes, I do them 12 at a time. Drag a crate closer, turn the bottles right-side up. Spray some sanitiser on the bottle mouths to take away last traces of possible contamination from picking them up and turning them around. Dump a carbonation drop in each bottle, fill and place aside. Once 12 is done, I get up, grab the capper, cap them with sanitised caps (I usually soak them in the sanitiser when I start) and place them back in the crate. Move on to next. Repeat until done.

PS: I'm busy looking at crap I can sell off so I can start funding my kegging setup. Bottling takes up the vast majority of time if you're an extract brewer like me.

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

I cleaned and scrubbed and bottle brushed the first few batches I did until I read somewhere (John Palmer, I think), that once you have cleaned new bottles of factory residue, just rinse very well immediately after pouring your beer.

I have been doing that ever since:
-pour out remaining beer
-fill with hot water and very vigorously shake
-repeat a few times
-visually check in the light that there is nothing obvious still stuck on the inside of the bottle
-drip dry upside down on the drying rack until the next day
-place right way up in a box
-(i used to also clean the popped cap and clip it back over to seal out the scrimungus but dont bother anymore)

On brew day i soak the caps in a container of no rinse sanitiser. i then just dunk each bottle in it and fill about 5cm of it into the bottle and then give another vigorous shake, pour out, place a fresh cap on and load it into the crate ready for bottling.

Pour out the remaining little bit of NRS just before filling each bottle.

I basically dont use a brush anymore unless i see scrubbing is required. But so far ,touch wood, out of about 1200 bottles so far i have only had 3 go funky (Sadly Toxxyc was the victim of one of those ). You would have to screw up badly on your bottling to contaminate a lot of bottles..

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

I used to rinse after use and as soon as I have a crate full of empties, I fill the bottles with a mixture of warm sodium per-carbonate water. let sit for 10-20min ... dump 90% of solution and then force water into them from the "Kärcher" high pressure machine ... and then since they usually feel very soapy after this i give them a couple of rinses in the pool to save water.

...but that was a couple of years ago, and although I used to like cleaning and filling bottles, these days I keg and will NOT be looking back

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

...but that was a couple of years ago, and although I used to like cleaning and filling bottles, these days I keg and will NOT be looking back

Little digression... Question to a kegger... Dont you find it a bit sucky that you cant easily give out a few bottles of beers to mates, or take a couple to a braai etc?

[JIGSAW Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close JIGSAW]

Little digression... Question to a kegger... Dont you find it a bit sucky that you cant easily give out a few bottles of beers to mates, or take a couple to a braai etc?

Not really, friends come to visit more often now, and they can make a real big dent in a keg if they pour all night

Little digression... Question to a kegger... Dont you find it a bit sucky that you cant easily give out a few bottles of beers to mates, or take a couple to a braai etc?

I sometimes fill a few from the keg which is not easy since I dont have the proper equipment to fill like that, but I usually only need a few as I will not drink beer all night when it comes to a braai night

[Harhm Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Harhm]

I keg and bottle and must be the laziest bottler around.
I pour and press the cap back on by hand, shake the bottle to loosten the yeast sediment remove cap and rise x 2 with 1/4 bottle tap water and place upside down in dryrack.
If I dont rinse the same night I dont leave the bottles with sediment for more than 48 hr (with cap on to keep yeast sediment moist) I also only do a x 2 tap water rinse and drip dry on these. When dry I store the bottles in crates in a old freezer.
On bottling day I half fill a long flat plastic storage box with sanitiser water, soak everything incl bottles for 15-20 min ( making sure I spin them once or twice to cover the inside properly) Take out of sanitiser, up side down for about 2 min to drip, bottle and place sanitised cap on bottle. When I have all the bottles filled I cap all of them together and place in crates to carbonate in the old freezer.

Bottles that come back get filled with water using a WAP, 24-48 hr water soak to soften yeast, drain water out on lawn while shaking, another round of WAP shake and drain. Then a hand wash: detergent soak and bottle brush, 1 x clean water rinse, dripdry and storage. Damn now Im thirsty just thinking aboat all that work.


Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk

[Tmartins Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Tmartins]

I hear u langchop, I prefer bottles, I used to buy those 5 l refillable kegs from bevplus, but they were a hassle to clean and coating doesn't last long, bottles u can always take a few to a friends house, with regards to cleaning, the day of brew I rinse them with warm water and use a bottle brush, I then use a vinator to spray sanitizer into the bottle, it works well for me

[atunguyd Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close atunguyd]

Put me down for just rinsing straight after pouring. Bottles then do dry upside down and next morning they go into an SAB quart crate upside down and remain there till needed for bottling. In bottling they get a spray with the steriliser using a vinator bottle riser and put onto the the bottle tree to wait their turn to fill.

From my experience dirt and dust doesn't fall upward into an upside down down bottle.

Sent from my SM-N950F using Tapatalk

[Toxxyc Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Toxxyc]

From my experience dirt and dust doesn't fall upward into an upside down down bottle.

This is why I store my bottles upside down :P

[BeerHolic Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close BeerHolic]

Thanks you all
I think in the future I will give a good rinse after pouring, skip the in between clean with detergent and sanitise on bottling day.

[DR_Beer Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close DR_Beer]

I start cleaning bottles a week before bottling.
After drinking I triple rinse to remove solids then put about 15 bottles in a bucket, lets say Monday evening, and fill them all with cleaning solution (mangrove jack cold wash is what I have at the moment) and then i let it stand till the next day. When I come home from work I clean the batch, rinse them and put on the drying rack, then I soak the next batch of 15 bottles and the cycle continues until I have enough clean bottles. Then on bottling day i rinse them in water to remove any dust and then I sanitize the bottles and caps and in goes the beer.

I also reuse the cleaning solution for all batches of bottles, if it doesn't look to dirty, just to save water.

[Langchop Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Langchop]

From my experience dirt and dust doesn't fall upward into an upside down down bottle.

I fear the climbing scrimungus. The ones that crawl in to die.

[Dewald Posthumus Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Dewald Posthumus]

I'm also a lazy bottle washer.

I rinse immediately after pouring and let them stand upside down in the dish rack. On bottling day I pack them upside down into the dishwasher, spray them with a mixture of vinegar, Sunlight soap, and lemon juice and wash them in the dishwasher.

No rinsing or sanitising after the cleaning cycle, just bottle directly from there.

[Harhm Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Harhm]

I have dont trust my dishwasher enough to not sanitise after washing bottles in it, there is just too much buildup, gunk and stuff in those rotating arms and other parts of a dishwasher

I'm also a lazy bottle washer.

I rinse immediately after pouring and let them stand upside down in the dish rack. On bottling day I pack them upside down into the dishwasher, spray them with a mixture of vinegar, Sunlight soap, and lemon juice and wash them in the dishwasher.

No rinsing or sanitising after the cleaning cycle, just bottle directly from there.

Sent from my SM-T561 using Tapatalk