Cleaning / Sterilizing Bottles

[studio1]

Bottling up my frist brew today into a mix of bottles / plastics. With the bottles (which I rinsed after each was used), I have placed in a full dishwasher cycle with no detergent. Should I then proceed with star san or sodium met?

[Soren]

Hmm, my standard 750 ml PET bottles from the home brew shop always shrunk. The thread would usually stay intact so the bottle was still usable, but the volume went down to about 500 ml. Maybe I should have used less than full heat:)

[James P]

Soren, I would say this would actually provide a testing ground for bottles that would be prone to exploding, as I would have thought they should crack in the heat if they had defects.

I use the oven for my glass jars for yeast harvesting and any that are going to crack generally do in the heat.

[Nolen Smith]

I'm still a bit old school. I use a combination of 3 gallons (give or take) of cold water with 2 or 3 cap fulls of the cheapest chlorine bleach I can buy (unscented). I usually soak overnight then rinse with hot (as hot as my hands can stand) tap water - hot water breaks down chlorine. I've bottled more than I could ever count this way and have never had a problem. The chlorine soak also makes label removal really easy ...That said, it does waste a bit of water and the level of chlorine that is already in my Wellington tap water makes it hard to use the 'smell test' to tell if the rinse has worked; so I'm *really* keen to try Starsan... anyone know where I can buy some?!

Also... my girlfriend bought me two 19ltr kegs as an early b/day present on the weekend... so my bottling days are hopefully mostly over!

[studio1]

you can get Star-San at Brewers Coop.