I’ve brewed 3 batches so far, the 3rd an Irish Red Ale that is ready for bottling.
What I have been doing is running the bottles through my dishwasher w/ detergent finishing it with the sanitization cycle/heated dry and bottling them straight out of the washer once they have dried.
I came across a thread that mentioned the detergent can be bad for head retention/carbing.
Is this true? If so, can I run them through the dishwasher & sanitization cycle without detergent or should I be hand washing/rinsing and then using San-star before…
It can also lead to off flavors. Rinse each bottle immediately after it is empty, quick rinse in PBW or Oxyclean and the sanitize cycle on your dishwasher or quick rinse with starsan to sanitize at bottling time.
Has anyone ever used OxyClean in the dishwasher in place of detergent? I am bottling for the first time this weekend and am not looking forward to washing 50 bottles by hand. I have some 22oz bottles as well but they all still have labels on them and, I know it is OCD, but I don’t want to bottle in them if there are labels on the bottles. Running them through the dishwasher with OxyClean and then sanitizing with StarSan sounds way easier.
The labels will easily fall off with a soak in oxyclean. For the most part it requires little to no work with most bottles.
I’ve used B-Brite in the dishwasher, but only after the bottles are already clean with no labels. Originally I filled both cups with B-Brite, then for a couple of batches just the 1st cup to make sure that all detergent is well rinsed off. My last batch I skipped the B-Brite altogether. I figured since I had clean bottles and was just trying to sanitize, the B-Brite was superfluous(sp?). I’m pretty sure that with my dishwasher at least, I’m not getting much of anything up into the bottles, so am actually not doing any real cleaning, except for the outside of the bottles. However, the ‘heated dry’ option on my washer does get temps up to where it should be sanitizing pretty well.
Works for me, no infected batches in over a year(knock on wood)
I’ve done the oxyclean soak in a bucket for labels, and it really does work well, except for a couple bottles I had with Mylar labels- nothing except scraping seems to get those off.
[quote=“GeerBoggles”]Has anyone ever used OxyClean in the dishwasher in place of detergent? [/quote]Don’t do it - the Oxi forms suds with all the water and the pump runs dry, then when you shut it down and open the door a wall of foam comes out. Or so I heard… 
Haha, noted! Soaking it is!
Haha, noted! Soaking it is![/quote]
There is nothing wrong with rinsing immediately after pouring the beer out, allowing to dry, storing upside down, and then on bottling day running them through the sanitizing cycle on your dishwasher (no detergent or jet dry).
Thanks!
Nice to know the Oxyclean trick as well…have about 150 bottles sitting in the garage with labels still attached…
