Bottle Sanitation

[Belgian Inspired]

I hate bottling! I will have a kegging system as soon as Santa brings it but I’m stuck till then. I started brewing damn good beer and it’s all fine until it comes out of the bottle 2 weeks later. I have random levels of carbonation ranging from the half fill that almost took my hand off to zero carb not to mention the random infection. In the 50+ bottles I fill I’m only happy with about a case. Here is my process….should I add another step or change it completely?

1-long soak in oxyclean to get rid of labels
2-Outside is scrubbed with very mild unscented dish detergent and the inside gets a rinse with tap water and an average of two rinses on a Vinator Bottle Rinser with starsan
3-24 hours on bottle tree to dry
4-cover with foil and bake at 425 for 2-3 hours, let cool and store

The foils stays on till bottling day, I just remove the foil, fill and cap. The caps are filled with starsan for a minimum of 5 minutes and dumped right before it goes on the bottle.

I have a TBN – Can You Brew It – Moose Drool & Obsidian Stout to package this weekend. They taste so good now I don’t want my bottling to spoil them. Cheers!

[keelanfish]

I'm in the process of setting up for kegging, but to this point have been brewing for four years and have done over 30 batches, with the last 10 or so being 12 gallon batches. I've bottled 100% of the beer in recycled bottles and have never had a problem with infection...knock on wood. Here's my process.

1. Hot oxyclean free soak overnight (inside and out, all bottles regardless of lable or no).
2. Rinse each thouroughly and quickly inspect for debris, films, flaws in the glass, etc. A strong LED flashlight is very useful for this step.
3. I got a new dishwasher about a year ago that is 100% stainless on the inside. It holds a total of 60 bottles (pointed straight down) using both the top and bottom racks. It also has a sanitize feature that essentially turns it into an autoclave. I clean the screen filter, run the dishwasher with a little starsan on the sanitize setting. Then once done, I clean the screen filter a second time, load up the bottles and run without any detergent or anything. It's a good rinse and a the steam helps sanitize.
4. While the dishwasher is running, I clean and sanitize my 20 gallon Blichmann HLT and use it for a large bottling bucket. The site glass is nice to know exactly how much volume of beer for priming sugar calculations, and the lid ensures a relatively sanitary environment. I also push the beer out of the fermentor with CO2 and also purge the Blichmann with a little CO2 to help in preventing O2 pickup.
5. Once the dishwasher is finished and everything is setup and ready to bottle, I use one of those spray sanitizer things (Vintenator?) on one bottle at a time, fill and cap with a sanitized cap. I repeat this process until I've used all the bottles in the dishwasher and then load up a second load and run it as in step 3 above. I've never had to do more than two dishwashers ful.

I know this is probably overkill, but as I said, I've never had a problem with infection.

[Belgian Inspired]

Damn ...I have equipment envy. The Blichmann HLT would be a sweet bottling bucket, I'm using the olde Ale Pail. My dishwasher is dead so thats not an option. I guess I need to also use the Vinator rinser on bottling day as well. I just figured the oven heat and it being sealed would kill everything and keep bugs out. I'm picking up 6 cases of empties tonight so I have a shit load of work ahead of me

[keelanfish]

I've heard the oven trick works best when it's a moist heat, like steam. Maybe a slight amount of water in each of the bottles would help. I'm not sure, I've never tried using the oven before. Before I had the Vinator (thanks for the spelling), I just used a five gallon bucket to dunk the bottles in, let sit, and then dump out. It definately worked, but it was a pain, messy and required mixing up 5 gallons of starsan, which gets expensive over time. The Vinator uses just a little starsan and really seems to do a good job of coating the inside of the bottle with just a few quick squirts.

Also, if I were guessing, I'd say the source of your contamination probably isn't coming from the bottles, but rather something that's plastic. I'd focus on the bottling bucket, tubing, bottle filler, etc as the source.

Good Luck!

[SeeFish]

+1 to the sanitizing dishwasher

Haven't made the jump to kegs yet but the dishwasher almost makes bottling bearable for me, last thing I want to do is worry about sanitizing individual bottles.

[Cody]

Also, if I were guessing, I'd say the source of your contamination probably isn't coming from the bottles, but rather something that's plastic. I'd focus on the bottling bucket, tubing, bottle filler, etc as the source.

Good Luck!

+1

Also, you might have uneven distribution of your priming sugar solution. This will need to be evenly mixed throughout your beer to provide the same carbonation in all bottles. Otherwise, the first bottles you fill will be different from the last ones. You can check this by arranging your bottles in order of fill, then after a few weeks, open the first and last bottles you filled. If they are the same, you're good.

[Adam]

For priming, get a sanitized spoon and stir the beer and sugar together well. Don't make bubbles. I used a nice steady figure 8 motion and raised and lowered the spoon. Did that for a minute and all is well.

For sanitation, I use One Step in hot water. I fill the bottle a third of the way with the solution, put my thumb over the hole, shake it up a bit so it touches the insides completely, and pour back into the sink. I then lay the bottles on their side on the floor on top of a towel. Never had an infection.

I've bottled 8 or so batches like that. My keg is coming from Northern Brewer this week and will be my first kegged batch.

[Belgian Inspired]

Thanks to all. I spent all weekend cleaning the sweet bejesus out of 6 cases of bottles and the rest of my equipment. I skipped the oven this time. I'm bottling tonight so i'm just going to give them another rinse on the vinator and go for it.

I'm going to try the carb test with the first and last bottles. Also going to mix it better than I have in the past. I took a longtime last night measuing the volume that is going in the bucket so I dont over or under do it on the sugar solution. I will give you an updat in about 2 weeks