Cleaning Wine Bottles

stained how?

Stained with red wine? Like in a film.

A bottle brush and a good cleaner. TSP works most of the time for me. In extreme cases, soak in Diversol (pink powder) for a while (like overnight) then brush.

Steve

A 10% bleach solution along with a brush also works.

Joe

I use white vinegar and a small gauge stainless steel chain. Pour in about a 1/2 to a cup of vinegar, top off with hot water, feed in the chain. Pop in a used cork and swirl the chain until the stain is gone. Pop out the cork and hold the bottle upside down swirling the chain until the end of the chain sticks out the neck. Remove chain and rinse bottle.

Steve

I just use rocks. An earlier post suggested aquarium gravel.

A cheaper alternative is a quart of clean pit-run gravel, screened through some 1/4" mesh hardware cloth to get rid of the fines, and screened again through 1/2" cloth to eliminate the larger chunks. Wash it a couple of times with soapy water in a bottle, rinse well, and it's ready to go to work.

Pour into the dirty bottle or carboy with 3 or 4 cups of water, a couple of squirts of soap, slosh round and round, up and down, drain out into a sieve when done. Really tough dirt gets soaked overnight - bottle full of water with a few squirts of soap.

My only real challenge was a gallon jug with a rusty deposit. That one took real work. Finally wired a steel wool pad onto the end of a coathangar to get it all off.

And why go to all that work? that's my batch size, and the locals want 7 bucks each...... You may guess I have some Scottish ancestry....!

I dry the rocks > Chain? Like a bicycle chain? or light fixture chain? This sounds like a

Sash Chain -

any hardware store. I keep a 3 ft length in a drawer in the kitchen where I rinse bottles. Works every time.

Steve

Dave Allis> Chain? Like a bicycle chain? or light fixture chain? This sounds like a