Sterilising - Easy and 'clean' solution?

[Lambros the Stout]

Hey all

I have searched the forum for this but couldn't find a topic on this. I am brewing a Timothy Taylor clone and so far so good. After 3 days there is a nice protective layer of foam at the top of the wort and could be bottling in a week or so.

Everyone hates sterilising bottles and I am no different (I use VWP).

I was thinking that I could sterilise the bottles by sticking them in the oven at a temperature of around 100c and leaving them for around 15 minutes. Apart from the bottles breaking due to the heat I don't see why this is not a good solution, and the heat can be sorted if I put the bottles while heating the oven, hence they warm up slowly.

Could anyone shed any light on this, and whether it is/isn't a good idea?

Cheers

 

[Cononthebarber]

In theory that should work however from what I have read about this, you will need longer than 15 minutes to get the bottles hot enough to actually sterilise them (more like 2 hours) and the temperature will need to be closer to 150c to do the trick...

 

[joe1002]

I would think about using videne or starsan, see HERE :thumb:

 

[Dr Mike]

In theory that should work however from what I have read about this, you will need longer than 15 minutes to get the bottles hot enough to actually sterilise them (more like 2 hours) and the temperature will need to be closer to 150c to do the trick...

While you're right that you need to go to 150C to sterilise (although only 30 minutes is needed), we only need to sanitize bottles for which 15 minutes at 100C should be good enough.

VVP, Videne, Starsan etc do not fully sterilise either.

 

[Lambros the Stout]

Cheers both - It looks that actually putting bottles in the oven will take quite a while and not as straightforward as it sounded.

On the subject of Starsan etc I'd rather not use non rinsing acid products as I don't feel 100% comfortable with them. I appreciate they are used extensively but I'll stick to the traditional methods :)

 

[Good Ed]

get some Videne, simples :thumb:

 

[StevieDS]

I'm on my 9th brew now and I've been using the oven for my bottles every time, not had any problems yet. I put the bottles into the cold oven, turn it up to 200c, as soon as it gets up to temp (when the red light goes out) I switch it off and leave the bottles inside to cool. :thumb:

 

[pittsy]

wow that's a lot of hassle , i simply swill the bottle out after i use it then store it in a storage container and on brew day i use a bottle tree with star san (which is good for the yeast) which takes around 5 mins max to do .

 

[bobsbeer]

If you don't want to use Videne etc, then use thin bleach. Way cheaper than VWP, but you still have to rinse well. The best buy for me was a bottle rinser. It gives a good blast of steriliser then rinse with a bottle blaster. The bottle rinser doesn't work with Coopers pet bottles without slight modification due to their larger diameter neck. But it's a great investment even at about £15 or less.

 

[StevieDS]

wow that's a lot of hassle , i simply swill the bottle out after i use it then store it in a storage container and on brew day i use a bottle tree with star san (which is good for the yeast) which takes around 5 mins max to do .

I put the bottles in, turn the dial and leave it, where's the hassle? :wha:

 

[Dave1970]

I used the oven before going over to Cornies & Starsan. I could fit about half the bottles for a batch in at once - set the oven to 95 C and left for half an hour. When done offload into a crate and load the other half, while these are 'cooking' go and fill the first lot.
Never had any problems with infections and they were nice and warm on my hands when bottling in a cold garage!

This was with an electric fan oven so nice even heat distribution..wouldn't try it with gas, the hot flames at the back would be way too likely to crack the bottle.

 

[mikeyjay84]

I have one of those cheapo plastic storage boxes which I bought from a '99p' store. I fill this half way with warm-hot water, chuck 2-3 tsp of vwp in and then the bottles. Make sure they are all full of water and sit them there for about 5mins. Then I rinse each bottle 2-3 times and stand them upside down on my dishwasher rack. (I give this a good wipe with a new j-cloth soaked in vwp).

Although this has worked fine for me in the past, I am slowly veering toward buying a bottle tree and 'the bottle squirted thing' as well as some starsan. I think it'll save me time and mess.

As all my bottles until now have been either coopers pets or pub bottles, I have had to chuck all the pub bottles into my bath tub with bleach and seriously hot water. My Worcester boiler can be cranked up to max and send out water at 65 degrees. This lets me clean the bottles, but also pretty much melts all labels off the bottles.

 

[boozy_shoes]

On bottling day I:

*fill my bottling bucket with 3tsp VWP and 4ish gallons of warm water and leave that to soak along with syphon tube, hydrometer and thermometer.
*Go and find and put required bottles out on kitchen floor.
*Come back and pour all the solution from bottling bucket into spare fermenter and rinse it and all tubing out and put syphon together.
*Put as many bottles in solution as possible (usually a third will fit in if its 5G) along with littlebottler attachment.
*Syphon out of secondary into bottling bucket and test final gravity while first lot of bottles sterilise.
*Rinse first lot of bottles twice in the kitchen sink and put the second third of bottles in the steriliser.
*Add priming sugar and stir in bottling bucket.
*Bottle first third and cap.
*Take 2nd third of bottles out of steriliser and put the 3rd third in solution,
*Rinse, bottle and cap 2nd third.
*Rinse, bottle and cap 3rd third.

I can usually do this in about an hour / hour and half and is the fastest most efficient way I can think of doing things. Can anyone suggest anything to make the method easier? I don't want to move onto bottling trees or starsan/videne as I struggle to see the point or them. Thanks

 

[Aleman]

Clean the bottles as you empty them, using Hot water, Invert to dry, cover with silver foil . . store, on day of use, remove foil spray with starsan/videne, fill cap.

Only time spent on bottling day is finding the bottles.

And it gets even easier if you spray with starsan and cap with the plastic reseals before storing. Then its shake, remove seal, drain, fill, cap.

That is the point of starsan/videne1

 

[Tyronnster]

Just spotted a jet carboy thinking about one of these.

But defo rinse out after each use

 

[MPLMPL]

On the subject of Starsan etc I'd rather not use non rinsing acid products as I don't feel 100% comfortable with them. I appreciate they are used extensively but I'll stick to the traditional methods :)

I haven't used Starsan, but plan to add some to my next order as I'm fed up with the excessive rinsing required when using thin bleach. Looking at the ingredients in Starsan, when diluted to the correct concentration, you would be ingesting at most a few drops of dilute phosphoric acid with a trace of surfactant per bottle of beer. The pH of Starsan when diluted to sterilizing 'power' is somewhere between 2-3 I think (it needs to be kept below pH 3). The tart taste in many soft drinks is imparted by phosphoric acid (food grade phosphoric acid is big business for companies such as Solvay that process phosphate rock). The pH of Coca Cola is ~ 2.5. The pH of beer is ~ 4. The traces of Starsan will have a negligible affect on the pH of your bottled beer, if you drink Coke (ghastly stuff) and the like, then you are drinking a far more concentrated solution of phosphoric acid.

 

[operon]

The good lady wife bought me Starsan for father's day so I look for ward to my bottling being much quicker. Going to clean and sterilise them then cap them using the caps that were on them previously( I take the of carefully and collect them) else use tin foil. Then come bottling sterilise with the starsan win win

 

[mikeyjay84]

I'm personally not worried about the ingestion of star San. My only worry is its effect on beer/taste. I know this is silly as so many experienced brewers use it. Is there any way you could seriously cock up with star san? My guess is that you would have to not dilute it enough with water right?

Very much considering this method for the future. The amount of water that I use to get everything clean, surely in the long run some starsan plus bottle rinser will work out better.

 

[bunkerbrewer]

I'm personally not worried about the ingestion of star San. My only worry is its effect on beer/taste. I know this is silly as so many experienced brewers use it. Is there any way you could seriously cock up with star san? My guess is that you would have to not dilute it enough with water right?

Very much considering this method for the future. The amount of water that I use to get everything clean, surely in the long run some starsan plus bottle rinser will work out better.

All sanitisers (pretty much all home and industrial chemicals, really) should be mixed according to the guidelines, so this isn't an issue specific to StarSan :)