Cleaning glass bottles

[zedd]

Tore down an old barn on the property and found a cache of old glass bottles. There where several capped one gallon jugs that local legend says once contained homemade spirits. I thought I'd clean up a few of the bottles to see what they would look like.

Found what worked best was making a slurry of 3/4 cup rice, water and a drop of liquid soap, swished around in the bottle. It worked great!

This of course doesn't sterilize the bottle but does get it sparkling clean with little effort.
Now on to sterilizing the bottles.



We'll have apples, plums and rose hips maturing in a few months. We'll do gallons and gallons of apple juice. Most will go into plastic one gallon jugs and then into the freezer. Hard cider, apple jack, apple wine and plum wine we'll put up in the glass bottles.

We'll do a few gallons of rose hip wine, also in the glass bottles, for medicinal purposes.

 

[brucethebroker]

Those are real beauties! Nice work, keeping them out of the landfill.

 

[Winemaker]

Just be extra sure the bottles are clean of any solvents or residual matter. There are some bottle and carboy cleaners like Easy Clean that remove them after a good soak. I have seen many home winemakers ruin a delicate batch of a fruit wine or rose because gramps put some cleaner in years ago.

 

[ChiliPepr]

Just be extra sure the bottles are clean of any solvents or residual matter. There are some bottle and carboy cleaners like Easy Clean that remove them after a good soak. I have seen many home winemakers ruin a delicate batch of a fruit wine or rose because gramps put some cleaner in years ago.

+1 I am not familiar with Easy Clean, but the cleaner I always used when brewing beer was TSP (Trisodium Phosphate) and can be found at most hardware stores.

 

[zedd]

A question to the beer and/or wine makers out there; what method and/or products do you use to sanitize or sterilize your bottles. Would a product like Easy Clean or TSP be sufficient?

 

[braumeister]

I've used this for years. Works great. Very popular with homebrewers.

 

[ERD50]

A question to the beer and/or wine makers out there; what method and/or products do you use to sanitize or sterilize your bottles. Would a product like Easy Clean or TSP be sufficient?

Those are cleaners, not sanitize/sterilizers.

Get them clean first, TSP is good. Once clean, I prefer Star-San as a sanitizer. It is a strong acid, but not really dangerous once diluted for use. A minute of contact time, then just drain it - no need to rinse. The pH is diluted by the wort/beer/must/wine you add, and Star-San has no flavor or odor. But the container must be clean first - or the 'gunk' neutralizes the acid. Super simple to use, I mix a half gallon at a time, and keep a spray bottle handy to spritz stuff as I go along. Mix it with RO or distilled water and it should be good for ~ 3 weeks. The unmixed stuff has a very long shelf life, I don't think they even date it.

Beer and Wine Equipment Sanitizer - Northern Brewer

Heat works, but is tricky/dangerous for jugs that size.

edit - cross-posted with braumeister!

-ERD50

 

[jriemerm]

When I brewed beer I used the product linked below attached to a utility sink faucet in the basement. Incredibly effective.

https://www.amazon.com/Faucet-Carboy-Beer-Bottle-Washer/dp/B0055RSPKK

 

[Curmudgeon]

Mix TSP and some oxiclean (sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate) and you'll have a great bottle cleaner - same stuff that's in a lot of the commercial cleaners.