Easy way to sterilise glass bottles

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bquiggerz

Easy way to sterilise glass bottles

Post by bquiggerz » Thu Nov 26, 2015 9:09 pm

You can sterilise glass bottles using your oven. Anything over 120C will work. These steps come from my experience gained from jam making. Users on another forum had great success with my method so I have decided to transfer them here.
The first step is to clean your bottles well using your favourite cleaner. Once you have done that you need to load the oven. Make sure you have a timer set to 40 mins.

WARNING - do not preheat the oven as you can burn yourself and/or shock the bottles which will break them.

Once you have loaded up your oven turn it onto 150C and start your timer.

Once the timer goes off, turn the oven off and leave for at least an hour before removing them.

WARNING - If the bottles cool too quickly they may break. To prevent this allow ample time to cool and do not put any liquids on then before they are cool to the touch.

Now you can either use the bottles right away, don't forget there's no harm in starsan for a final step but shouldn't be needed at all.

I hope these instructions are clear if not feel free to ask any questions.

Thanks for reading,

Ben.

BenB

Re: Easy way to sterilise glass bottles

Post by BenB » Thu Nov 26, 2015 11:38 pm

It does work well but be careful. Easy to thermal shock the bottles. Despite heating slowly and cooling slowly some iof my bottles fractured the next time I put them in a bucket of pbw. Didnt realise until the water went kind of cloudy pink. ......

Clibit
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Re: Easy way to sterilise glass bottles

Post by Clibit » Fri Nov 27, 2015 12:59 am

I find a bottle rinser with Starsan quick and easy. And no bottles get shocked, or upset in any way. : :boff:

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orlando
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Re: Easy way to sterilise glass bottles

Post by orlando » Fri Nov 27, 2015 8:56 am

For bottling beer this technique is fine but if you are wanting to properly sterilise for yeast etc. then you would have to follow the Tyndallisation Process to be sure you have also killed off spores. Better still is getting hold of a big pressure cooker.
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Re: Easy way to sterilise glass bottles

Post by bquiggerz » Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:00 pm

I agree with everything said here, this was more towards the guys without the equipment/space to do it the usual way. And has been said this is for bottling beer, an autoclave or much longer/hotter baking would be required for yeast. As a precaution try it with a few bottles first and be prepared for a breakage every now and then.

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Re: Easy way to sterilise glass bottles

Post by Aleman » Fri Nov 27, 2015 3:10 pm

One thing that you need to be aware of is that the heating cooling cycle (Annealing) does weaken the bottles.

It's also frickin expensive compared to 8.5ml of starsan in 5L of suitable water which will do hundreds of bottles

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