What's your suggestions for easiest and best way to wash used bottles, unknown on how they were cleaned after past uses?
i will assume easiest means less labor intensive if so a overnight soak in PBW solution and a rinse with warm water the next day. This will also remove any beer labels as well. If by visual inspection the bottles still have crap inside the bottles after the soak and rinse, then put those in the recycle bin and move on.
I like to use a bottle scrubber. You can get it at every LHBS. Its an oversized pipecleaner, or a mini carboy brush.
Overnight Oxyclean soak, quick bottle brush on the inside, warm water rinse. Oxy should help the labels come fairly easily, then a wet washcloth to wipe away the adhesive.
Yep. Let them sit in some super hot water with oxyclean overnight and the labels will fall right off. Before bottling sprinkle a pinch more of the oxyclean in each bottle and shake them up with some hot water and you should be good!
just use your own bottles and thoroughly rinse after drinking. I experimented with thorough cleaning as many have posted above and just rinsing. Both turned out exactly the same. If there is no visible sediment in the bottom, all of the bottles turned out fine without any change in flavor or contamination. It takes considerably more time to bottle brush every single bottle. Caveat: I sterilize in the oven per Palmer's book. Now that I have about 10 cases of sterile, label-free bottles, it really does not take much time to bottle. Getting the labels off was a real pain. I have not yet tried an oxyclean soak. May try that if I run low on bottles.
