PET bottles after an infection?

[TheOsprey]

So my first brew, an out of date extract kit, was a complete bust. I ended up with 46 undercarbed bottles of sour maltyness. It was not pleasant. I'm pretty sure I had an infection at some point, but not sure how.

I've since brewed the simple AG recipe, and bottled it in the same bottles (after washing obvs). To wash them I just repeatedly and vigorously swished them out with hot water, immediately after emptying. This seemed OK at the time, but having just stuck my nose in an old bottle, it seems to have regained its sour malty smell.

Are these bottles going to be OK to use? Or should I just ditch them and start again. The simple AG only filled about 8 bottles, so they won't last long enough to see any ill effects, but I've got a porter planned next and I don't want it to pick up any off flavours over time.

I've bulk bought more bottles from brew2bottle, but I don't like the idea of binning that much plastic...

 

[Banbeer]

I had an infection and have re-used the bottles after cleaning with VWP and the beer was fine.

 

[strange-steve]

Just be a bit more thorough with the cleaning before you reuse them and they should be fine. Some contaminations are more difficult to shift than others, wild yeast for example, as I've just experienced first hand from an FV.

 

[Mavroz]

Are you also Sanitising bottles and equipment?

 

[strange-steve]

Are you also Sanitising bottles and equipment?

Not sure if that was directed at me, but if so this particular issue wasn't exactly "wild" yeast but rather cross contamination of brett B from a previous brew, and it presented during primary fermentation of the new beer (pellicle) so I know the FV was the problem. I thought I'd cleaned and sanitised thoroughly but apparently not. I've used brett a load of times before, this is the first I've seen this happen though. I've always been a little skeptical of the need for separate equipment for "wild" beers but there you go

 

[user 18729]

I’d get a high dose of chlorine based steriliser on them- Bleach, VWP, Antiformin ect before following up with a no rinse steriliser prior to filling. Nothing is likely to survive that.

 

[Mavroz]

Not sure if that was directed at me,

Haha, no, sorry for the Confusion.
It was in reply to the original post, there is only mention of rinsing with water. No mention of proper cleaning or sanitisation.

 

[TheOsprey]

Haha, no, sorry for the Confusion.
It was in reply to the original post, there is only mention of rinsing with water. No mention of proper cleaning or sanitisation.

I use a no rinse sanitiser to prep the bottles before use. Bottles had only been used once, and I didn't clean them with anything before sanitising.

 

[Mavroz]

Ok, that is one more thing eliminated from the potential issue list...

 

[Binkei Huckaback]

If it was every bottle and you use a plastic fermenter, check for scratches in your fermenting bin.

 

[Stephen Cook]

Bleach.

Everything.