Low effort bottle sanitation technique

[madpierre06]

Yeah, I have always done the solid rinse as soon as bottle has been emptied then starsan on bottling day routine. This worked fine until the last case swap when there were a number of random failures which can be quite embarrassing.

New routine:
a) Rinse well
b) Prior to bottling (a day or two), all bottles will get brush and perc treatment then leave draining
c) Starsan then bottle.

This will apply to both glass and PET

 

[damoninja]

I'm usually too lazy to clean out my bottles as I drink them. So I chuck my bottle brush in an electric drill to clean. Takes no time at all.

Surely takes longer to do that than it does to rinse them at the tap after you've poured a beer.

Also less chance you're going to miss some as you're doing it while it's wet and sanitary opposed to dry and unsanitary.

 

[pcqypcqy]

Yeah, I have always done the solid rinse as soon as bottle has been emptied then starsan on bottling day routine. This worked fine until the last case swap when there were a number of random failures which can be quite embarrassing.

New routine:
a) Rinse well
B) Prior to bottling (a day or two), all bottles will get brush and perc treatment then leave draining
c) Starsan then bottle.

This will apply to both glass and PET

This happened to me at our last TooSOBA meeting. My triple-rinse with water works well with glass, but found it wasn't quite good enough for PET. I now ensure I use a napisan solution at some point before re bottling. Glad I found out before the xmas case swap, about to brew it up tomorrow.

 

[Stouter]

Faaarrrkkk, I'm still going with my morning routine of de-labeling my bottle stock. Thankfully it's balanced out well with my afternoon routine of drinking.

Had a mate drop off over 100 old school 'Remains Property of Swan Brewery' bottles, full of all sorts of farm shit from the last however many years. Wasp nests, mud, seeds, chaff, rat shit, skank.
So far for the first 12 I've done a soak in sodium perc over night, twice. Now I'll soak overnight in hot water, followed up with a bottle brush scub. All this shit is hard to move, but the reasonable ones which just rinsed clean the first time....a thing a beauty! Even if I don't use them, I'll display them somewhere.

My regular bottle stock almost finished processing now up to just over 300 bottles, de-labled, percarb soaked, hot rinsed, and stored in cardboard boxes. Ready for Starsan on the day.

 

[Stouter]

I've just had a revelation. I have a Dremel and might turn some of these really hard to clean old school bottles into glasses.
Has anyone tried this, can you give any tips?

 

[Crakkers]

I've just had a revelation. I have a Dremel and might turn some of these really hard to clean old school bottles into glasses.
Has anyone tried this, can you give any tips?

I remember an ad on telly from the 70's for some glass cutting tool, which showed people cutting beer bottles in half and sticking the top to the bottom to create stem glasses.
In hindsight, they looked bloody hideous, but it was the 70's, so they were pretty damn groovy at the time.
I reckon it must've been a K-Tel product.

 

[stm]

In terms of low effort, there are two things I recommend on bottling day (whatever your cleaning/rinsing routine).

1. Use spring loaded bottle washer thingy to squirt the starsan up into each bottle - quick and very little volume of solution required.

2. Use plastic hose attached to the little bottler thingy (between tap and little bottler) - don't move each bottle to the tap - have the bottles lined up in their crate and move the hose to each bottle.