Bottles in the Oven

[Smiley Dan]

For Father’s Day my Son and Wife gave me John Palmer’s “How to Brew”. Woo Hoo!!!!

I was reading about sanitation in the book last night. It says in the book that you can sterilize your bottles by putting your bottles in the oven with a piece of foil over the end. It gave a chart of how long and what temperatures to use. It also said you can store them sterilized indefinitely if you do not remove the foil.

I am not so much interested in storing them indefinitely or sterilizing them as opposed to sanitizing them. I think it would be nice to do this the day before bottling. Then on bottling day you can remove the foil from the bottle, fill, and then cap with a sanitized cap.

Have any of you ever done this? Do you think it’s worthwhile? Or would it be easier to use Star San the day of bottling? Thanks for any input.

[beerocracy]

I did this a few times back when I was still bottling. It worked well though I never tried saving the bottles for future use. I just heated them in the oven the night before and let them sit overnight until bottling the next day.

[dan.lamb]

It works just fine, but starsan may be cheaper and more eco-friendly than running your oven (gas/electricity, excess heat, running AC to compensate). Starsan is pretty handy stuff to have in your brewery.

If you use the oven, you still need to make sure you wash your bottles well before sanitizing them in the oven. They'll stay sanitized as long as they're still covered.

[oneal66]

This was discussed a while back. Doing this will sterilize your bottles. However, the bottles will be weakened and could break. If you do this put the bottles in the oven before you turn the heat on, and leave them in there until the next day.

http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7320&start=0

Here is the original thread.

Cheers!

[Smiley Dan]

Thanks for the input and the link.