A couple of bottling questions

[GMH]

My apologies if this is in the wrong place.

I will probably be putting a 10L batch into bottles tomorrow, but after reading John Palmer's online stuff I'm starting to doubt my cleaning method. I had planned to laboriously clean each one with a VWP solution (because I have a pot...) and then give it a good rinse before filling, but JP seems to suggest that unboiled tap water '...is a number one cause of spoiled batches'. Now, I figure there can't be anything too bad in there, but does tap water contain enough nasties to ruin beer? I did my last batch in this way without problem, but now I'm unsure whether that was just luck.

Also, I'm trying to work out my carbonation in Beer Smith and for something like 2 vol. it suggests just over 40g of corn sugar - does the equivalent in caster seem accurate for 20ish bottles?

My thanks in advance for any help.

Dave

[floydmeddler]

Hi Dave, I use one of John Palmer's bottle sterilisation methods which is to bake the bottles in the oven for an hour at 140c. This is fool proof as you just stick them in there and walk away... No scrubbing / rinsing needed However, you can only do this if your bottles were rinsed after pouring. This has always worked great.

Before I started doing this I used tap water with sanitiser and never had a problem other than the fact that it was boring, annoying and laborious.

Use this for carbonation: http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipa ... ation.html

Hope that helps.

[badgerdan]

I hate this part of brewing beer; seems to take such a long time making sure every bit has been sanitized; oh well, rather that than waiting weeks to then find out it was ruined all along

[GMH]

Baking them - now there's an idea! I didn't see that bit. I'll go and see if I can gently remove the swing-tops...

Thanks for the link - looks about the same, which is reassuring!

Cheers gentlemen.

[Spin]

I thought that is why you are not meant to wash your beer bottles in the dishwasher. Because heat weakens the glass and your bottles may go pop once primed .

This has always been my fear about using my dishwasher for cleaning bottles. Maybe I am full of brown stuff though.

[floydmeddler]

Have never had any issues at 140c for 1 hr anyway. Those bottles of mine have have had approx 10 hrs each in the oven altogether. The idea is to cover the top of each bottle with tin foil but I don't bother with that. The night before bottling day I put them into the cold oven and set it to 140c. When it reaches 140c I start timing. I turn it off after 1 hr and let it cool over night. Then I simply take them out the minute I'm ready to bottle. Breeze.

[badgerdan]

I've just always put them in the dishwasher (as they get covered in dust and crap when stored) and that's only up to 65c then put them all through a bucket full of sanitizer the day before I bottle. Never had a problem this way but it is very time consuming so may give the oven trick ago