bottle sanitation

[Russ H-R]

Evening all,
can you tell me if after sanitising you bottles, you rinse with cold tap water or cooled, pre-boiled water?

I'm sure I read somewhere that using un-boiled water was a sure fire way of infecting your brew. I've got to say I'm getting mighty bored with waiting for my water to boil and then cool in order to rinse 40 bottles!

Tap water can't be that bad can it :shock:

 

[BrewStew]

i use tap water... when i'm not using a no-rinse sanitiser. not had a bottle infection yet (touches wood)

pop down to boots and buy Videne Antiseptic Solution (make sure its antiseptic though, there are two other varieties). it's about £4.30 per 500ml and you only need 1.25ml per litre for a no rinse sanitiser. a bottle lasts forever :thumb: then you dont need to worry about rinsing at all, let alone whether to use boiled or tap water

best of all, videne in water will go clear as an indicator that it's no longer sterile... aslong as it's yellow, it's working :thumb:

 

[Russ H-R]

WooHoo- no more boiling, waiting, rinsing :thumb:

That is music to my ears, Cheers BS :grin:

 

[BrewStew]

no worries mate :thumb:

you might need to ring them up and speak to the pharmacy first though... they never stock it, but will order it in :thumb:

 

[NickW]

How exactly do you sanitize - without rinsing the bottle with this Videne Antiseptic Solution stuff?

I'm a little confused

 

[percival]

i've never had an infected bottle from rinsing with tap water either. Perhaps those claims came from someone who's tap water came from something a little out of the ordinary rather than chlorinated mains water. Or they used water from the hot tap? or they didn't bottle immediately after sterlising/rinsing? something like that. But having said that being a stickler for a sterile environment won't be a waste of time.

 

[BrewStew]

How exactly do you sanitize - without rinsing the bottle with this Videne Antiseptic Solution stuff?

I'm a little confused

if you use Videne Antiseptic in a 1.25ml of Videne per Litre of water quantity... it's strong enough to kill nasties, but weak enough to not mess with your brew... therefore you dont need to rinse the bottles under the tap

so for example you could fill fermenter bucket with 20L of water, add 25ml of Videne... drop all your empty bottles in it and leave them for a few mins... take them out and pour out the contents, and fill them with beer straight away, without rinsing off the bottles under a tap or in boiled water.

it basically takes a step out of your sanitising routine :thumb:

 

[Russ H-R]

I've ordered the Videne from my local boots, cheers BS :thumb:

Can you use it to sanitise cornies as well?

 

[BrewStew]

yep!

though it will turn your fermenters (or anything plastic for that matter) yellow over time.

 

[BrewStew]

just remember if your videne is clear when you pour it out of your cornie/fermenter/bottle/whatever, it means you need to do it again. i think that's a great indicator personally :thumb:

 

[Vossy1]

Some cleaning agents neutralise videne, so if the videne comes out of your corny colourless, it might be worth re rinsing the corny to remove any remaining cleaning agent, before using more videne solution.