Beer Forum

I'm using the dishwasher "sanitize" cycle on my bottles after thoroughly cleaning them with a bottle brush. For better or worse, I'm throwing some StarSan in the dishwasher where the detergent normally goes. My question is in regards to my lack of patience....

When the dishwasher finishes the sanitization cycle, I'm typically waiting on it to begin bottling. Should I be concerned that there is still a small amount of moisture in the bottles when I pull them out and fill?? I'd like to think that the water in there would not introduce any contaminates, but I really don't know.

You just want to avoid any soap residue in your bottles, leftover in your dishwasher from previous cycles. I imagine there is nothing wrong with wet bottles, per se. Wet or dry bottles will contain the same traces of soap. I think you could get away with that method successfully. I used to sanitize my bottles in the oven. 250 degrees for 20 minutes or so. It would take about 1 hr for the bottles to cool off with the oven door cracked, afterward. I really liked this method because it was so easy and is very effective. I could fit the 20ish 22oz bottles standing up on a large cookie sheet. Try to leave a gap between each bottle, so the cool more quickly.

If you've thoroughly cleaned your bottles... and you've already got the StarSan... then why not just do a soak?? It really only needs to have between 30 seconds and 3 minutes of contact time to sanitize the bottles. You can also start bottling as soon as you pull the bottles out of the StarSan (don't fear the foam). That's all I do. Clean with PBW... sanitize with StarSan for a few minutes and you're done. No issues.

The beauty of the oven is that they don't have to be cleaned with PBW. Any tiny particulate in the bottle will be sanitized with heat. With liquid sanitizers, the bottles have to be 100% clean, first, to be effectively sanitized. I would just rinse my bottles out after I drank them, then another quick rinse before putting them in the oven to get rid of any dust, etc.

deprecated wrote:I'm using the dishwasher "sanitize" cycle on my bottles after thoroughly cleaning them with a bottle brush. For better or worse, I'm throwing some StarSan in the dishwasher where the detergent normally goes. My question is in regards to my lack of patience....

When the dishwasher finishes the sanitization cycle, I'm typically waiting on it to begin bottling. Should I be concerned that there is still a small amount of moisture in the bottles when I pull them out and fill?? I'd like to think that the water in there would not introduce any contaminates, but I really don't know.

I have to advise against star san in the dishwasher. It makes a mess, trust me. I tried this one time and it turned into a very "Justin-like" moment. The entire kitchen was swimming in suds.
I just turn up the water heater as far as it will go and put in dishwasher on sanitize mode. Works fine without chemicals of any kind.

Dishwasher works great for sanitizing bottles. Be sure NOT to use any jetdry/ or soap as that will hurt your head retention in your bottled beer. The diswashwer method is really only for heat sanitizing, so be sure to let your bottles go until the dishwasher is FULLY done and has steam heated up well. Let the bottles cool just a bit before bottling so as not to kill any yeast for bottling.

Hi People,

I am new here and this is my first post. Actually I came here searching the same topic on the internet. Cleaning bottles with dishwasher sometimes becomes a mess and recently I've done this experiment. Found it really messy because wasn't able to see a clear head. I thought to do some googling and found this thread. Crackin has given me the solution. Thanks.

Dishwashers will not clean bottles, the diameter of the neck is too narrow to reliably get stuff sprayed up inside enough to clean. They will clean the outside though . If you are using dishwashers, make sure they are clean, and make sure that the dishwasher is clean as well (no chunks of stuff in the trap, etc). Run it through with no additives, all you are looking for is wet heat, and let it heat dry if your dishwasher has that option.