Old bottle cleaning

[BigJilm]

Hi Community, 

What are your methods for leaning old pet (or glass) bottles?  I have a few old bottles that for one reason or other have a bit of scudge buildup around the collar from fermentation, or some dried old sediment from bottle not cleaned immediately after pouring.

Are there tools (bottle brushes) or chems good at getting rid of that stuff?

[Mere Mortal]

Hi BIGJILM,

I use a general bottle wash powder and a bottle brush to get any crud off. after that I rinse each time I empty the bottle. I usually soak them in the bottle wash for about 30 minutes about every tenth use. or if I see any hazing of the bottle. can't give you a specific name for the powder just that it is one I originally got at a BrewMart outlet.

 

[grogdog]

Sodium Percarbonate does the trick every time. Ive bought it from my local brew shop, bought it mangrove jack brand, bought it 1kg from cheeky peak brewery.com. Its the active ingredient in napi-san, any brand, aldi woolworths whatever, look for no scent. And use it at (approx)  1.2g per litre of hot tap water, and soak for 30 mins, an hour, a day, doesnt really matter. End with a quick rinse.

And then sanitise before use, using a no rinse santiser.

[Graculus]

I put mine in a plastic container with water & bleach.
Soak for 24 hours. They come out very clean.

Rinse well though.

[grogdog]

2 hours ago, Graculus said:

I put mine in a plastic container with water & bleach.
Soak for 24 hours. They come out very clean.

Rinse well though.

I used to use bleach too, cheap and accessible and works, but i dropped it after having a bad batch and eliminating potential sources of phenol's.

[Otto Von Blotto]

It should be fine if you rinse it thoroughly and allow the bottles or whatever to completely dry out. If you got phenols there must have been some residual chlorine left. I don't use it though unless I'm nuking something. 

[Malter White]

On the recommendation of another forum contributor, I bought a couple of these from Kmart. Only $1.50 or $2 from memory. They work really well.

[Shamus O'Sean]

38 minutes ago, MUZZY said:

On the recommendation of another forum contributor, I bought a couple of these from Kmart. Only $1.50 or $2 from memory. They work really well.

These work really well in PET bottles.  They do not scratch the inner surface.  

No good for my glass bottles because the brush end does not fit through the narrower mouth of the bottle.

[Malter White]

3 minutes ago, Shamus O'Sean said:

These work really well in PET bottles.  They do not scratch the inner surface.  

No good for my glass bottles because the brush end does not fit through the narrower mouth of the bottle.

I've only used PETs so I wasn't aware of the glass bottle issue.
Thanks for the heads up, Shamus.

[Shamus O'Sean]

Big W has one for glass bottles LINK

And your LHBS will have something similar too.

Cheers Shamus

[Lab Cat]

I just rinse mine out straight after they're empty, then put away til next bottling. Before bottling, I soak in some no rinse sanitiser and rinse out, then I put them through the vinator (bottle pump washer) with star san and fil them.