..and another thing

[timbo41]

obviously previous bottle idea also good for rinsing bottles after sanitation which brings me to.. at mo i sanitise big batch of bottles in bath normally in cold water with thin bleach added for an hour or so but lately SWMBO has been "suggesting" we get one of those hand held steam jet cleaners ( see QVC channel!!) and i been raising objections but now i wonder could they be "tricked up" somehow to be an easy way of sanitising bottles after cleaning? Is steam at 100 c + good enough to kill off nasties just before bottling? seems a cleaner way than bleach etc thoughts/ experiences appeciated.

[simco999]

Well in theory this sounds good. How much do these steamy things cost. Bleach at 29p for 2 litres at Tesco is very cheap.

I've gone the Starsan route - which I swore I wouldn't but takes a lot of the work out of bottling. Also cheap as I have done 3 brews with it and hardly used any.

[timbo41]

hiya! Wow just googled that starsan stuff looks like you might need an ex army biological suit just to get near the stuff!! My thinking with the steamer is that the headmistress is gonna make me buy one eventually.. might as well get some use out of it. In all honesty the bath/bleach/good rinse and drip dry doesnt bother me overly especially now i jerry rigged an easy use rinser. Just wondered if steam ok as a sanitiser, bit like an autoclave(?) i guess

[simco999]

Oh dear don't go there - gregorach will pounce.

Its nothing like an autoclave - apart from the heat bit.

(Puts on bullet proof vest and gets popcorn on).

[timbo41]

whoops.... hehehehe

[timbo41]

whoops.... hehehehe

[gregorach]

Meh... Steam "sterilising" probably isn't that bad an idea - as long as the bottles are clean first. But you're still probably going need a good soak in a decent cleaner and a thorough rinsing to get them properly clean in the first place.

[gregorach]

Although I would be a little concerned about the possibility of thermal shock causing your bottles to break, producing an exciting mixture of glass shards and superheated steam...

[timbo41]

bugger kind of missed the obvious flaw in my plan for world sanitation domination

[simco999]

Although I would be a little concerned about the possibility of thermal shock causing your bottles to break, producing an exciting mixture of glass shards and superheated steam...