Beer Forum

A while back, I built a steam pasteurizer to handle large loads of mushroom substrate. Typically, with a load of sub in there it will reach temps of about 150-180 degrees. Now, I know that 160 is typically a pasteurization temp, but would it be be okay for sanitizing bottles? I want to see how hot I need to get bottles to sanitize them before I build another rack for my pasteurizer...

It will be a matter of temperature and time. Either real hot for less time, or cooler for longer... I don't have numbers in front of me, I think it's been mentioned before, but if no one else post them up by this evening, I'll see if I can find them.

According to food service sanitation guidelines, it has to hit 165F for 3 seconds to sanitize, 165F for 15 minutes to sterlize.
The difference is that it takes 15 minutes to kill any spores that some bacteria form to survive. Most commericial dishwashers that use heat to sanitize have a 30 second rince cycle at 165F to assure the dishes get hot enough at the final rince.

Hope this helps,
Alan

Thanks guys. If I insulate the box, I can easily reach 180F, so I'm thinking I'll go ahead and build a rack. The box should do about 2 cases of bottles at a time, maybe more depending on how I build the racks. I feel a little safer using this instead of the dishwasher/oven...

The time required for dry heat is quite long - I am not sure how adding steam would affect it. Palmer gives a table for dry heat in how to brew:

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter2-2-3.html

250F is the lowest temperature considered and the time for sterilization is 12 hours.

Wet heat is much more effective

Typically, I'll put in about 3 bags of substrate (each about the size of a basketball), and pasteurize for 3 hours to ensure even heating. That's pretty much what I was planning to do with this, is just leave it on for a few hours on brew day to get my bottles nice and bug free. It's basically a plastic storage container with PVC piping from a wallpaper steamer to spread the steam out evenly throughout the container. It heats pretty thoroughly, and it's probably capable of going for three or four hours, as long as someone is around to refill the water tank.

Cool... could you post pics of your rig?