Planning to bottle my cider out the back today. I have about 20 bottles of ginger beer in the shed that I'm planning on dumping anyway.
My question is could I dump these and give them a quick rinse with water and then use them for my cider.
I presume I can since they won't be sitting anywhere gathering contaminants
Your water isn't going to be sanitised though, there could be all sorts of nasties in it but I'd say you'd be fine.
Aside from that though, a quick rinse isn't going to get rid of the ginger taste/smell.
Tbh thre isn't much gingr taste or smell from them, kinda way I'm dumping them. I have a 25 lyr picnic cooler, I might steep them in that maybe for 15 mins or so.
It probably took longer to ask the question than to sanitize the bottles. Just rinse and sanitize them.
Why don't you want to do it? maybe someone will be able to offer some advice to make it faster and easier.
If you're going to steep them, might aswell rinse them out and then steep them in sanitizer.
Otherwise, don't bother with sanitizing the bottles. Fire the new beer in and hope for the best. Keep your fingers crossed.
Because at the mo I have no spare bucket for the bottles plus the time it takes to rinse, sanitize and rinse again the 30 or so bottles is not that quick
I sanitise all my bottles in the dishwasher. You can't clean them in there because the water cannot get through the necks, but the heat of the dishwasher (50, 60 or 70C) plus the length of time they're in there sanitises them nicely.
Do you just rinse them afterwards, this would be a pretty handy way to get them ready
This makes light work of sanitising bottles. (http://www.homebrewwest.ie/bottle-rinser-avvinatore-red-139-p.asp) :) No need for soaking in a bucket ;)
Hi guys
Thinking there is a massive difference between sterilising bottles and sanitising them. I would imagine that bottles that are lying unused for more than a few hours should be both sanitised and sterilised. I find this the most painful part of brewing apart from bottling and cleaning up. However getting in to a routine with cleaning should remove one variable from the beer being produced. Imagine giving somebody a home brew in a bottle that was not cleaned properly or worse receiving a bottle yourself.
Shanna
Lets clear up the definitions:
Sterilising is done to totally kill off all but the most resistant nastys (like partial protein fragments in CJD disease).
It is performed at elevated pressures in autoclaves ( 120C ) or so - a domestic pressure cooker will do this. Can also be done for non-heat tolerant materials by gamma radiation but WE don't have access to a Cobalt-60 source.
Sterilisation will kill off all bacteria/viruses/fungal spore etc.
There would be no need to sanitise after sterilization!
Putting empty beer bottles into the oven at 120C would also sterilize them - ask Mum or Granny about jam making.
Boiling water would probably be good enough - after all thats what our wort gets heated to.
Sanitizing using chemicals is a low temperature quick way to sanitize clean, crud free equipment. Its what most of us use all the time for our bottles and kit. This is designed to kill of yeasts and fungii.
HTH :)
@GrahamR, Why would you not want to sanitize?
Use your sink.
EDIT: I see your mention of cooler, sounds good.
Quote from: Will_D on June 09, 2013, 09:34:56 AM
Can also be done for non-heat tolerant materials by gamma radiation but WE don't have access to a Cobalt-60 source.
Not if you're only looking on Boards.ie
I sanitized in the end as I always do but wouldn't you my twin lever capper started smashing bottles on number 11. Disgusted after I.had prepped 33 bottles. This was only my second time using this new capper. A bench one next for me I think.