Sanitizing Bottles: Need Help From The Brain Trust

[Steve Gyldenvand]

Sorry in advance for the long post. Ahem...

As many of you may recall, I had an infection issue a few months ago that got me rethinking my entire sanitizing process. Among the many measures I took, was to take a large 68L covered plastic tub and fill it about half-way with star-san solution. My bottle sanitizing process goes like this: pour beer, immediately rinse and visually inspect bottle, then store inverted in bottle rack; night before bottling, take the usual 29 bottles, eyeball inspect again, then immerse completely in that tub of star-san; the next day just before bottling, I remove and drain, put back in the bottle rack, and proceed to bottle. Well, yesterday I did as described and then today I started to bottle. I was on the 3rd bottle when I noticed a light residue ring in the neck of the just-filled bottle. Seemed odd, so I checked another bottle, then another, and it turns out they all had the ring of residue, slightly dark, kinda slippery, no odor I could detect. They were all in the neck, but not would I'd call consistent heights. Now bear in mind, that wasn't the top of the star-san fill level; as I said, they were all immersed completely. And to add further confusion, I found one bottle that seemed to have that residue kind of laced around lower in the bottle as well.

Needless to say, I washed and resanitized in a whole new batch of solution before continuing with the bottling. The 3 that I bottled before spotting the residue were left as is and segregated so I can see how they turn out. My initial guess is that I somehow missed a bottle with a bunch of residue when I put them in the tub yesterday, probably the one with all the additional residue in it. But why in the world did that ring develop in the necks of every single other bottle? (And for the record, the bottles were all immersed laying down, not standing up.)

So there it is, yet another mystery for the group. Anyone have any ideas? 

Slainte!

Edited July 30 by Steve Gyldenvand

[Mike A]

Steve, to my read, you only talk about sanitizing & StarSan.  Do you use PBW/StarClean as well?  For me, this is what breaks up any yeast left at the bottom of the bottle & anything else (labels from re-used bottles, other gunk).

Starsan is not as great a soaking agent to clean a bottle, it's more to just knock back the bacteria count, not introduce any new flavor to your beer and do it without rinsing.

Anyhow I may be jumping to conclusions, but if you're not using PBW it's great for removing/loosening the residue you talk about.

[Gillies Brewing]

I would very strongly suggest that a bottle brush is involved with this process somewhere. Unfortunately it means more work and time.

I've noticed having just moved to glass I am seeing a little mini-krausen in the neck of some of mine during secondary fermentation, so I would guess that's where your residue problem is coming from. Maybe it's hard to see when the bottles are wet?

My suggestion looking at your process there would be just to add a step when you're taking it out of the sanitizer bath, sticking a bottle brush in the bottle and giving it a bit of a swizzle in there to dislodge the residue by force.

Or like Mike said you could definitely soak in cleaner as opposed to sanitiser, but note you'll probably have to rinse it and then spray a little sanitiser before bottling.

Like I read somewhere "if it's not clean, it can't be sanitised!"

[Andy Simma]

I would think that’s your ring from carbonation.  Your soak may not be strong enough to break down. I always poor my beers out and hot water rinse and shake of bottle before drinking beer from glass. Agree a bottle brush in each bottle is good. I do this after a PBW soak. PBW breaks down any muck straight away. I keep this in a bucket and use this to clean out droid after bottling. After bottles pbw’d I then use no rinse sanitizer stellar San with a bottle jet. Again this shots with a decent pressure to blast of any residues. 

I also found fast rack better than the bottle tree as there is no contact with inside of bottle at all. 

 

I also use these racks to store bottles All bottles go straight into the rack after the hot rinse after pouring into glass  

 

[Steve Gyldenvand]

42 minutes ago, Andy Simma said:

I also found fast rack better than the bottle tree as there is no contact with inside of bottle at all. 

Thanks Andy, yeah that's the kind of rack I use. 

And thanks all for your input! I was really thrown by that ring in the neck showing up where there had been nothing visible previously. The carbonation ring (from a previous bottling) makes sense. Once again it looks like I have run afoul of a process that was working just fine right up until it didn't. I'll be adding the PBW/bottle brush routine to my cleaning, I just have to figure it out from a process perspective; as I've mentioned before, I am seriously restricted on work and storage space here in this old house.

Slainte!

[Mike A]

Short version of my process to possibly help for inspiration (i know mine is far from perfect also).

1. Rinse bottles after drinking (high pressure / give the bottle a good shake)
2. When enough bottles stored up, soak in PBW mix overnight, with warm water
3. Drain PBW, make use of the jet bottle washer I have, rinse & inspect for debris (hold up to light) use brush if needed.
4. Let dry on tree for several hrs (usually until next day)
5. Get brew ready for bottling
6. Make up a new stellasan batch, warm water, spray/dunk anything that's going to touch beer or bottle, including drying tree, bottle capper, taps, droid spout, lines etc.
7. Set up the sprayer that Andy provided a pic above, put all the bottle caps I'm using in there while I do everything else,
8. Give each bottle a good 2-3 sprays with the pictured above sprayer, let them sit on the tree for 2-4 min before filling with beer.

So for me it's a 2 day elapsed process, but soaking is only 10min of my time, the rest is soaking/drying time. The things that take the most time is rinse after pbw & stellasan sprayer pieces.

SO far no issues.

[Jimbo]

Thanks Mike I just did my first brew and was wondering how I should manage the bottles once empty. I'm going to follow your process. Appreciate your input. Cheers 🍻