Old bottles - worth cleaning?

[Kev888]

I have all these beer bottles, originally bought from boots or wilcos or somewhere. They've been in the shed for 15-20 years with no caps on, since i gleefully moved to kegs - they're the home now for dust, dampness, mould, snails, slugs, spiders etc etc.

And now I'm thinking of bottling again, if I can unsieze the rusted two-lever capper anyway.. I've never tackled any quite this neglected before, so I'm debating if filling them with a warm percarbonate cleaning solution and letting soak for say 24hrs would be likely to work wonders or if its more sensible to just bin them and get new ones?

Thoughts/experience would be appreciated!

Cheers
kev

[staplefordbill]

Hi Kev,

I'm sure they'll be all right. I have a demijohn my granddad used to brew with 30 or more years ago, and it cleaned up fine and I've made turbocider and cultured liquid yeast in it. Personally I'd use a strong solution of thick bleach rather than percarbonate, if you can either rinse them all well afterwards or leave them around long enough for the bleach smell to disappear.

[Kev888]

Hi Bill, and thanks! Sounds very promising, I'll have a go and see then - if you recovered a 30yr old one its at least worth a go. I managed to scale up the inside of a demijohn with bleach solution recently, but that was just me leaving it too long - bet there's a happy medium.

Thinking about it, I've a surplus of beer line cleaner as well, so perhaps that could be a 'plan B'.

Cheers
kev

[Hyeonway]

Probably a bit late to reply to this, but a good soaking in hot water to loosen things, then a dose of Oxi or some phosphate cleaner (eg, dishwasher powder) will probably clean them up best.

[Kev888]

Not to late; life got in the way again and they're still in the shed - probably a job for the weekend now!

Sounds good. I'm going to do both, I think - first a long warm, soak in percarbonate (oxy-generating) cleaner, and then the bleach (or maybe beer line cleaner, as I've a surplus of that) to sanitise and clean any residues. Then before use I'll give them an hour or two in the oven just to make sure if anything is left it'll also be defunct. I will be victorious

Cheers
Kev

[bungle666]

yup, percabonate and bleach is the way forward!

id rinse them all out first with cold water (to remove bugs/slugs ETC) then overnight in hot percarbonate. then a good rinse and a couple of hours soaking in a fairly strong hot thin bleach/water mix and again a good rinse! they should then be sorted!

[Kev888]

Good stuff - sounds like a plan then. I'll have to see if I can get them all in a builder's trug or two and get a system going..

Cheers
kev

[bungle666]

Good stuff - sounds like a plan then. I'll have to see if I can get them all in a builder's trug or two and get a system going..

Cheers
kev

I generally mix my bleachy mixture up in an FV and lay all the bottles out in the bath then fill the bottles using a plastic jug and funnel right to the top!

B..