Bottles

[Jaydee]

Hey guys.

Did a kit a while ago, and a hand full of them came out a bit average. So i'm putting it down to dirty bottles.

Thinking of getting a big stainless steel pot and boiling the bottles for 5 mins or so before i take them out and rinse, then fill then up.

what do ya think? Good idea or waste of time??

~J.

 

[manticle]

Some people bake them in the oven. I can imagine boiling them might lead to breakage. If you try it, try it with one and make sure you bring it to the boil from cold water as a tester.

Heat sterilisation/sanitation will be no good if they aren't clean first though so if by dirty you mean crud etc, you will need to remove that first. Napisan and hot water overnight, then a good rinse will do the trick.

 

[J Grimmer]

I currently bottle into tallies that i have gotten from the local recyling tip, i rinse and with water and soak in pink stain remover and that removes most of the gunk in about 3-7 days depending on time available during the week, I then sterialise in sod met bi sulf and drain. It works for me. I gues remove the what you can see first and then steralise once clean. Heat will sterialise but i find hot bottles hard to handle.

 

[Jaydee]

ya they're not full of crap, just looking to sterilize them.

only problem i can think of is that they're crown lager bottles. half of them have the labels...half don't....I can just imagine what the water will look like when the labels/glue start to peel off.

 

[mwd]

The hard job is cleaning the bottles after that a no rinse sanitiser is going to be much easier than boiling them in water to sterilise too hot to handle.

 

[manticle]

Crown lager bottles are pretty thin. I don't like their chances of being boiled.

 

[Jaydee]

so.....soak them in hot water with a cleaning agent, then rinse them will be the easiest.

what's the best cleaning agent?

 

[mwd]

Good point go and scrounge as many Coopers Longnecks as you can, nice heavy duty bottles.

edit: reply to Manticle's post above

edit on edit: unscented napisan is the most widely available cheap cleaner go for Homebrand or similar think but not sure the active ingredient is Sodium Perocarbonate or something like that.

 

[manticle]

Any oxygen based bleach (NOT chlorine based) which has sodium percarbonate as the active ingredient and which is unscented. Various nappy cleaners are most commonly used. Best with hot water, totally biodegradeable and the solution is re-usable to an extent.

 

[michael_aussie]

Buy a good bottle brush and use it.
Scrub, rinse, hold the bottles up to the light, if they aren't clean, scrub some more, rinse again and inspect again.
Keep going until they are spotless.
If the bottles aren't spotless you are wasting your time and your beer.

 

[Hatchy]

I haven't used a bottle brush in ages. Any filthy bottles that I have get soaked for at least 24 hours in sod perc, a bit of a shake & they come up fine. If they're still dirty I leave them longer. I hate using my bottle brushes.

Edit: I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using a bottle brush, I just prefer the less labour intensive option.