Extreme noob question - clean bottles?

For my homebrewed beers where I reuse my bottles my process is pretty much the same as you: I rinse them out immediately after pouring the homebrewed beer out and then I sanitize them prior to using them again for bottling.

One thing I have 'learned' is that if you hold the beer bottles up to a light source you can peer into the neck end and observe the bottom of the bottle to see if there is any crud or gunk on the bottom of the bottle.

Cheers!

 

wash them right after drinking them... then later before bottling re-rinse, and look through the opening tilting the beer up towards a light source(lightbulb on the ceiling?), and you'll be able to see if anything looks unkosher... look in the tiny little grooves along the inside outer-bottom edge... if anything is left in there that's where it will be... it there's really nasty crud in those grooves you're prob better just recycling them for real...

 

IMO, don't just use StarSan and trust that your rinse was good enough. I put a little Oxiclean (no odor) and hot water in my bottling bucket. Fill each bottle about half way with the hot water/oxi mixture through the bottling valve. Shake the ever-loving shite out of the bottles and keep the mixture in the bottle as you fill the remainder. Once all bottles are filled, start with the first bottle, shake, pour out oxi/water mix, rinse 2 to 4 times with hot water. Repeat for all bottles.
Then I fill the bottling bucket with StarSan and cold water to about the 2 gallon mark. Do the same process of filling the bottles and shaking, only this time when you pour our you do not need to rinse the StarSan. I also have a FastRack to drain bottles by storing them upside down. Great investment IMO.

 

cleaning sedimented crud is prob harder than removing labels... best to just do that thorough wash right after drinking, re-rinse before use, ck in light, star san, dry, use

 

If they are brand new, you should only need to rinse and star San them. Or you could scrub with a bottle brush and consider it practice for all the times in the future that you will want to do this.

 

Worsh the bottles thoroughly with water, then star san it with the Magic Fountain . It's work and dry nicely with then Bottle drying tree

 

caddamn thats a lot of work lol. Rinse immediately after using, then run in dish wahser day of with santize/steam cycle and steam dry..never had an issue with bombs

 

I immediately rinse out a beer bottle 3 times even when not reusing a bottle. I just hate the stink of stale, sticky beer when doing the recycling.

 

Tis a lot of work. Nothing more I hate than putting in all that time making a beer and having my bottles eff it up (happened only once, and I'll never trust the rinse again). I only bottle in 22 oz. format though, so basically cuts down to half the bottles.
Also, some of do not have (or want) a dishwasher in our homes.

 

Yeah, I started rinsing out beer bottles years before I took up homebrewing. Mostly to keep the fruit flies away in the summer.

 

This might be overkill, but I quickly clean with a little PBW, rinse, dry, put foil on the top and sterilize in the oven at 275 overnight. I put them in before I turn on the oven so they don't heat too fast and thus avoid thermal shock. I then consider the bottles good to go indefinitely as long as the foil remains intact.

 

I rinse bottles immediately after pouring original beer, the I boil used bottles for 10 minutes and bottle my new beer. Never had contamination issues. If I have new bottles I just use some starsan.

 

one word...dishwasher...assuming you have one. It's come in handy many a time.

 

One step that a lot of people omit is filling the bottles with hot water and oxiclean or pbw. No bottle brushing is needed unless you skimped on the soap. Let them soak overnight. Rinse 3x. Sanitize. You don't necessarily have to do this every time. Some beers rinse clean. Others leave a film.

If you never do it, try it on one bottle and compare that bottle to your other bottles. Fill them with water and hold them up to a light bulb. The difference will be obvious.

 

Oxyclean soak + rinse + starsan here as well. Too much time/effort invested in the beer to blow it on such a simple thing. Although, I'm surprised to read in some reputable brewing books that the authors often do not do more than rinse out their bottles (no sanitation used) and they do not have issues.

 

Count me in the camp of hot water rinse immediately after pouring + sanitize cycle without detergent in the ol' lavaplatos.

 

You can really see built up crud by looking through the neck with a decent light source outside.

I always do a quick rinse with some hot water shortly after drinking. Keeping mold from growing is 90% of the cleaning battle