Sanitizing wine bottles

I wash my bottles with soda ash soap (?) and then rinse with metabysulfite and wash in the dishwasher with no soap and use (bottle) right out of washer

Mike K

I wash thoroughly by hand with soap when the bottle is first emptied. Then before refilling (weeks or months later) I wash and soak again - this time without soap. Then rinse with a campden tablet solution and use.

I wash bottles with normal washing-up liquid and use a bottle brush for stubborn stains. I then rinse them thoroughly, dry and sterilize using a sulphite solution - they can then be used immediately but sometimes I keep half an inch of sulphite solution in the bottle, stopper it with a plastic cap and it's ready for use next week or next month or whenever!!!

Wouldn't matter if they did. To sterilize (i.e. kill germs) you need boiling water or steam, which is considerably hotter than a home dishwasher. Some germs will require even higher temperatures. Even restaurant dishwashers combine very hot water with a sterilizing rinse solution.

Wash the bottles in hot water (hot water removes deposits better than cold). Use a bottle brush to remove anything which is stuck on. Rinse well. Then put a few (fluid) ounces of sterilizer solution in one bottle, swish it around, pour it into the next (use a funnel), hang the empty bottle upside down to dry, and repeat for each bottle. Store them upside down (so things are less likely to get into them), and repeat this process just before bottling.

A good sterilizer solution is 1/2 tsp. metabisulfite + 1/2 tsp. citric acid per 250 ml cup water. Make up a gallon (~16 cups, 8 tsp. meta, 8 tsp. citric acid) and store it with a tight lid.

Another good solution is 2 oz. meta per gallon, but I prefer the first one.

Or you can spend a lot of money on commercial sterilizer products which are almost as effective.

I am just starting with this addicting hobby & so have made but 10 gallons (actually, the second 5 gallons is still working) so far. I am in a quandry as far as cleaning out old wine bottles for filling with my home-made batch. My question is; Will Household Bleach & water work ok to sterilize my used bottles?

Dennis(The guy with the germy batch of bottles)

Yep, hot water and bleach is fine, but a good and thorough rinsing is required as cholrine can affect the taste of the wine, so say three partial volume rinses. I myself don't bother trying to scrub bottles that have deposits of dried wine on them...

Yes, but you MUST rinse it out VERY thoroughly (for both health and flavour reasons). If you use metabisulphite, a bit of residual will not harm you or your wine. Also, meta is much cheaper than bleach. A

1-gallon bottle of bleach costs about $1. A one-pound bag of meta cost $2.19 per pound, and a pound of meta will make 8 gallons of sterilizer. And you can re-use the sterilizer if you only use it on "clean" containers.

This is what I do:

With used bottles I obtain from elsewhere, I soak them in a solution of water, bleach and detergent for 24 hours. I then empty them, remove the labels, glue, and scrub off any deposits. I then soak them in a solution of bleach and water for the next three nights. Then I rinse them with citric acid, to remove the bleach, then with water, and then with meta. This is overkill, but it pleases me to do so. I don't know where those bottles might have been, or what might have been stored in them, or how long they've been sitting.

It's also not as difficult as it sounds, since I have four 5-gallon buckets outside, and the bottles just move from the first (containing the soapy water) to the (next containing the bleach) to the next (containing the rinse water). The citric acid and meta are just poured from bottle to bottle. It takes less than one minute per bottle, since I do a bunch at the same time.

With used bottles that I've just emptied myself, I rinse them out, soak them for at least an hour in hot water, remove the label, use a bottle brush to dislodge any deposits, rinse with water, then meta. That is all that's necessary. Again, it only takes a few minutes --- less time than loading and unloading the dishwasher.