Autoclave bottles?

You could.

I would experiment. Minute flaws in the surfaces of these blown glass bottles may very well lead to a rapid and catastrophic flaw detection.

(In short, your bottles will explode)

You can buy an 18 gallon tub from Target for 3.99, buy some electrosol dish washer detergent (powder) for 2.99, fill said tub 3/4 with hot water and add your bottles. Soak for 1 hour or so (put the lid on so it stays warm) and your labels and debris will all come off- with the bonus they'll dry streak free!

If you're really worried after that cleaning, stuff them in the dishwasher for a pot/pan cycle with a high temp dry. That'll do the ticket.

And finally, if this doesn't dissuade.you from putting your bottles in the oven, make sure that you go thru a very gentle warm up and a very very long cool down- you might cycle the oven back on to heat it back up so it receives 2 cycles. Even tho glass is an amorphous substance you can still get preferential expansion.

Stu, Your wife would kill you if your burnt off the labels because you would probably have a few blown up bottles and a house full of smoke.

Bottles need sanitized, not sterilized. A good washing is all that is necessary.

Joe

..And if you _must_ sterilize, a 10% solution of bleach will do the trick. You could also use idophor (iodine) solution.

I wonder.....if you _had_ to heat sterilize, there's always one of those tall "canning" pots you could boil the bottles in. `twould take care of debri inside, and lables out side...Hmmmnn.........

Jim L.

I use 10% bleach on bottles that have mold in them, works great. I put less than an ounce in and just shake it up and let it sit for a few minutes. It's good on grungy airlocks too...

Joe

I've heated wine and cola bottles to a very high temp before, and never had one crack or break. Was heating them to around 1400ºC, so hot they become like taffy, and stretch of their own weight.

Anyway, the place I used to work, has a big 4'x4'x4' oven, and I thought baking 150 to 200 used bottles at once would be a real time saver.

As stated above. Those bottles are not heat tempered and not designed to be heated that way. They probably will not explode as suggested above, but they may break. No big problem. But they may also develop hair line fractures that fail at an inappropriate time. If there are any air bubbles in the glass, as there frequently will be in these bottles, the air in them will try to expand under the heat you are talking about and generate tremendous pressure. They will be small bubbles so I do not think the will explode but that pressure can certainly cause fractures. Do it at your own risk. You may set a bottle on the counter in front of a guest and have it shatter when it taps the counter.

Ray

In your case, you've gone well beyond the glass temperature- at that point a good cooling is all that's needed to keep the bottle intact. When you go only partially up you induce additional stress within the bottle that can lead to catastrophic failure. The key is the heating and cooling cycles- but I'm not a materials engineer... only had enough courses in college to be dangerous.

oh please, glass at that temp needs annealing, no question about it.

I use bleach too, don't know what it does, but am comfortable with it.

I've been heat sterilizing all my bottles for wine & beer for the past 3+ years, and have never had one break in the oven. I've also only once had one break without being dropped (the bottom mysteriously came off a bottle of Nebbiolo/Cab Sauv blend the day after I bottled once). I would estimate I have processed well over a thousand bottles this way.

The key is to bring the temperature up and down slowly, because as previous posters have said the glass in these bottles is not tempered, and thus is vulnerable to heat shock. Rapid temperature changes will shatter wine bottles. I place bottles in my cold oven with the mouths covered by foil, then heat to 200F. I step up the temperature in 50 degree increments, with at least a 15 minute hold at each temperature once the oven has hit the target. Ultimate target I go for is 350F, which I hold at for at least 1 hour. Then I turn off the oven and let it cool down with the oven door CLOSED.

The foil protects the bottle indefinately until I am ready to fill it; I've prepped bottles months in advanced this way.

I would not recommend burning off the labels in the oven, that would require very high heat, and I'm not sure what what fumes may come out of the label adhesive or inks. I soak off the labels and clean out any grundge before the sterilization, because clean and sterile are two different things.

From a thermal engineer who likes to ferment things.