Sterilizing bottles

[Martin Cosgrave]

Hi all

I've collected a fair number of champagne style bottles to try to get some sparkling cider going. My question is how to sterilize them? Is it better to use a sterilising solution, or overnight in the oven? If the latter, how long and at what temperature, and if I put tinfoil "hats" on the bottles before they go in the oven will they stay sterile?

Also, I'm not planning to add any yeast, just a little sugar to try and get any remaining yeast cells to multiply. Is this likely to work? How much sugar should I be adding?

Thanks
Martin

[Andrew Lea]

Martin Cosgrave wrote:
>
> Hi all
>
> I've collected a fair number of champagne style bottles to try to get
> some sparkling cider going. My question is how to sterilize them? Is it
> better to use a sterilising solution, or overnight in the oven? If the
> latter, how long and at what temperature, and if I put tinfoil "hats" on
> the bottles before they go in the oven will they stay sterile?

Either way will probably do. With the oven method the bottles will have
to go in clean after a wet wash anyway, unless you have already cleaned
them as you collected them. The tinfoil 'hat' is certainly what people
do with laboratory glassware in autoclaves. If you use a chemical
cleaner / sterilant you must rinse it out well with clean water (the
risk of re-contamination with tap water in the UK is minimal, but you
can always used cooled boiled water if you are worried).

>
> Also, I'm not planning to add any yeast, just a little sugar to try and
> get any remaining yeast cells to multiply. Is this likely to work? How
> much sugar should I be adding?

It nearly always works. Obviously the time it takes - maybe weeks or
months - will depend on how much yeast is left as well as other nutrient
factors.

For safety reasons you should not exceed 20 grams per litre of total
sugar (SG 1.010). If all that ferments you will get about 6 bar which is
the design pressure for a full weight punted sparkling wine bottle. If
some of them are thinner walled flat bottomed lookalikes but not the
real thing, I would go with less sugar than that.

Andrew

--
Wittenham Hill Cider Page
http://www.cider.org.uk

[Claude Jolicoeur]

Martin Cosgrave wrote:
> I've collected a fair number of champagne style bottles to try to get some
> sparkling cider going. My question is how to sterilize them? Is it better to
> use a sterilising solution, or overnight in the oven? If the latter, how
> long and at what temperature, and if I put tinfoil "hats" on the bottles
> before they go in the oven will they stay sterile?

I have an automatic dish washer - I think it is great for bottles. I
remove the top tray, stack the bottles on the bottom one. Put a bit of
dishwasher soap in the place it should normally go and a bit of javel
on the bottom - the javel will do some sterilisation during the first
cycle. And I put the machine on the hottest setting. Never had any
problem. I can do about 30 Champagne bottles in a wash. I don't bother
with "hats" as I normally do this just before I am ready for bottling.
Claude

[Dries Muylaert]

Bottles should be clean. Sterilising by heat is not necessary. Give them a rince with sulfited wather and let them leak out. If you don't want a malolactic you should sulfite the cider once fermentation is over. If the cider is christal clear you do need to add a yeast in limited quantities however, if you don't fermentation can take a very long time. Bottle fermentation is done at about 10 Celcius. If you want to degorge the bottles look at one of the previous posting on how that is done. In my experience getting a yeast out of a bottle is not easy, unless it is a champaign yeast. Wild yeasts kling very strong to the bottom.

Sugar: Andrew's advice. But measure density carefull, should be below 1000, if not there is residual sugar.

Using second hand bottles is a risk. Rough handling can cause micro ruptures, making the bottle weaker.

 

[Nat West]

A bit off your original question here, but I've collected a massive number of secondhand bottles and I de-label then with a bench mounted grinder wheel with three soft-bristled copper-colored metal deburring wheels stacked up. It takes about 5-15 seconds to do each bottle (after a couple-day presoak). I have tried myriad other ways to get labels off but I am simply in love with this method now. I'll put up a picture on the Flickr pool soon as I have a couple hundred bottles waiting to get de-labeled. 

After the labels are off, I give them a sodium percarbonate soak, a visual cleanliness check, a couple high-pressure rinses, then a run through the dishwasher as Claude mentions, on the "heated water" setting (25 per run). One day I'll have to do a "carbon footprint" calculation on this multi-step cleaning versus buying new bottles. 

I strongly encourage friends to return bottles for reuse. Bottles that I've previously used just get the rinsing and hot dishwasher treatment.

-Nat West

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[Dave Sargent]

hi.   this year we made a purpose build steam bottle sterilizer, its basically a network of 15mm copper pipes soldered together with 12 x 250mm tall uprights with small steam vent holes. the bottles are presure rinsed to make sure there are no spiders etc! then uptuned onto the uprights, the steam then fills the bottles.   ( I "borrowed" the design from a fella on Ebay, as we wanted a bigger setup, but if anyone is interested in a 6 bottle one then search "steam bottle sterilizer" you should find it. its abot £30 plus £5 postage, not actually a bad price concidering the price of copper and fittings)   the stream is generated using a domestic (2.3kw) wallpaper stripper which will do approx 48 bottles (4 x 12) before needing re-filling.   initially the network of pipes filled up with condensation water, problem solved by drilling 2mm dia holes in the underside of the network.   a clear plastic "box" is inverted over the whole thing, hole drilled in base to allow thermometer to be inside to read the temp.   we easily got 97 degrees C and the bottles come out hot and dry.   I recon it takes about 10-15 mins to get 12 bottles up to temp of around 80 degrees. (once all the copper has heated up) this would be much faster with two steam generators, or not being in a tented shelter outside!!   I will email pics off group if anyone is interested in our setup, so as to not fill inboxes of those not interested.   as an asside, this weekend we finally finished our pressing season. 600 litres of fermentation and in excess of 300 bottles of juice. A "gift" of 500kgs of organic conference pears last thursday was an interesing (and frantic) end to the year. (SG pear juice 1064, PH in excess of 4.8!) so there is some fermentation/blending experimentation happening with that, but mostly pressed with apples to make some stunning juice.   regards   Dave         --- On Thu, 11/19/09, Nat West <natj...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Nat West]

Wow Dave, sounds fantastic. I would love a picture, or add it to the Flickr group. Thanks!

-Nat West

[Martin Cosgrave]

+1 for pics please, the only things on ebay are for baby bottles

Martin