I’m a few weeks from bottling my first batch of beer. I purchased two cases of bottles from NB: do I need to santize these before using?
Thanks!
Yes. You may want to do a quick rinse and inspection also to make no critters crawled in the bottles.
You need to sanitize bottles…? Just kidding totally evrytime… At least a quick rinse of sanitizer and rinse… Take an extra few minutes to make sure a quality beer!
+1.
When I have new bottles, I generally take each one and blast the inside of it on the bottle washer
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/jet- ... asher.htmlfor 15-20 seconds, then into a tub of starsan to sanitize. No rinse, and place them on a sanitized bottletree.
Definitely sanitize them - they should be basically “clean” - but they are sure to have some dust in them and the like.
[quote=“BurritoBoy”]I’m a few weeks from bottling my first batch of beer. I purchased two cases of bottles from NB: do I need to santize these before using?
Thanks![/quote]
The best thing you can do is read some books on home brewing. Some are pretty entertaining and all will cover basics like this. I know it’s your first time but you really should already know the answer to this one. Welcome to the world of home brewing!!
“This one” should be reformulated to read:
Should I sanitize any and every item that will be touching or containing boiled wort or fermented beer?
The answer is always yes. The only exception is the glass you’ll pour the beer into when you’re about to drink it.
:cheers:
A new medical term the acronym would be CSOCD (Cold Side OCD).
Welcome to the forum :!:
I have learned so much from the homebrewers on this site. You don’t learn just from the folks that have hundreds of batches of experience, you also learn from people asking questions you may never have thought of yourself. Mountains of information to search from and find answers but sometimes you have to ask the question again because it may not address your particular situation exactly.
Regarding sterilizing, I took this approach from day one, (bolstering what ickyfoot wrote) .
Assume everything that literally touches the wort after the boil and unbottled or kegged beer needs to be sanitized (sterilized) and don’t assume it is unless you have seen it done or done it yourself.
Good luck with bottling of the first batch. Be patient with letting them “age” a little in the bottle. It’s tough to do, but worth it. 
Brew On
[quote=“Brew On”]
Regarding sterilizing, I took this approach from day one, (bolstering what ickyfoot wrote) .
Assume everything that literally touches the wort after the boil and unbottled or kegged beer needs to be sanitized (sterilized) and don’t assume it is unless you have seen it done or done it yourself.[/quote]
Sanitizing and sterilizing are actually two different things. What most home brewers to is sanitizing; using some chemical agent to eliminate 99% of bacteria rendering the surface safe for brewing purposes. To STERILIZE something you’d need heat it for long enough to kill 100% of bacteria, like they do for medical instruments. This isn’t necessary for most homebrewers except maybe those who culture their own yeast…
ya. thanks for the correction. the point i was making was it is important to understand when to be sure and have “clean” equipment.
and who (or is it whom) is to say that the op may not opt for using an oven to prep the bottles for bottling?
now, about that contamination or infection thing…
[quote=“Demus”]To STERILIZE something you’d need heat it for long enough to kill 100% of bacteria, like they do for medical instruments.[/quote]Or mix up a 2x strength batch of StarSan - I do this to nuke fermenters after a good PBW/Oxiclean soak. Just be sure to rinse the stronger StarSan off before use (I use a regular strength StarSan for the rinsing).
Ha!
Interesting. I had no idea you could actually sterilize with StarSan…good to know!
Seems like it still wouldn’t Sterilize-with-a-capital-S, would it? Some bacteria can survive a pretty impressively low pH.
I can’t confirm or deny this would work, but in “How to Brew” by John Palmer he lists StarSan as a sanitizer. At any rate, the point is that sterilizing is simply not necessary for a fermenter. The ONLY reason I’ve ever read for true sterilization is for yeast farming; where 100% purity of a yeast strain is critical…
Sometimes more is just more, not necessarily better…
