- Joined
- Mar 23, 2018
- Messages
- 1,116
- Reaction score
- 2,170
- Points
- 113
I have a mixture of new bottles bought from a commercial bottle seller - about 200 - and a large collection of recycled bottles from a friendly pub and my fishing club bar. The best form of recycling.
All the recycled bottles come empty (unfortunately) and with labels on so I have to process them to make them usable for my home brew.
I boil up about 20 lt of water to about 80 C and put about 24 bottles at a time into a large bucket with the water and a couple of heaped tablespoons of VWP steriliser. I leave these bottles to steep overnight so they are thoroughly sterilised and the commercial labels are softened up.
The next day I heat up another load of water and fill another bucket to be used as an initial rinse and then proceed to scrape off the labels and dump the cleaned bottles in the rinse bucket. Once all the bottles have been done I set up my bottle tree and Vinator with boiling water and do a final rinse and air dry. Once the bottles are dry I cap off the bottles with plastic reseal caps and store the bottles until needed. The bucket of rinse water was not thrown away - adding more VWP I use it to sterilise other FVs and kit so it is not wasted.
I use a StarSan spray on the bottles before bottling my next brew. I haven't had any infection problems yet.
All the recycled bottles come empty (unfortunately) and with labels on so I have to process them to make them usable for my home brew.
I boil up about 20 lt of water to about 80 C and put about 24 bottles at a time into a large bucket with the water and a couple of heaped tablespoons of VWP steriliser. I leave these bottles to steep overnight so they are thoroughly sterilised and the commercial labels are softened up.
The next day I heat up another load of water and fill another bucket to be used as an initial rinse and then proceed to scrape off the labels and dump the cleaned bottles in the rinse bucket. Once all the bottles have been done I set up my bottle tree and Vinator with boiling water and do a final rinse and air dry. Once the bottles are dry I cap off the bottles with plastic reseal caps and store the bottles until needed. The bucket of rinse water was not thrown away - adding more VWP I use it to sterilise other FVs and kit so it is not wasted.
I use a StarSan spray on the bottles before bottling my next brew. I haven't had any infection problems yet.
