best sanitizer for bottles

[BMOOR]

Can I get some advice on sanitizing bottles? We are new to bottling and want to get it right the first time. In house we have iodine, chlorine dioxide, and can get p.a. acid easily enough. I know everyone has their favorites, but should I be worried about oxidation from one of them? contact time? residual flavors/aromas?
FWIW, bottles will be placed on a homemade rinser (thanks Dave at O Fallon-it's gonna work well) and sanitizer will be cycled in from a submersible pump and we will have sufficient draining time prior to filling.

thanks for any advice you can share.

[Herbstoffe]

Sounds like you have it sorted, PA acid is the way to go, just make sure that you keep it below 30ppm, I'm pretty sure that we used to run it at about 20ppm. contact time of 20 seconds, is generally sufficient to kill 99% of all micros, running the dosing any higher could give flavor taint, must places just put the PA acid in the rinse water to sanitize the rinse water not the bottle, because of the lower contact time when using an automatic rinser. just make sure the bottle get a good purging with sterile CO2 and a fob of some sort when full to reduce the in-pack air and it should all be good.

Cheers

Brett

[Hofer]

30ppm?!

Sounds like you have it sorted, PA acid is the way to go, just make sure that you keep it below 30ppm...,
Brett

Are you sure it is 30ppm and not 300ppm?
Haven't encountered any source where the value for PPA was less than 75ppm.
Looks like 30ppm could be sufficient for rinsing water not for bottle sanitizing.

Leonid

[dick murton]

PAA residues in contact with beer have been shown to produce off flavours at some sites. I know some people are using O3, or chlorine dioxide at low levels - circa 0.2 ppm is often used OK, or use UV light, though the advantage of ClO2 or O3 is that there is a residual kill effect on the distribution pipework, which means you don't have to clean / sanitise this so often. Or of course there is sterile filtration - but I would go fo CLO2, O3 or UV

Cheers

[Moonlight]

I would avoid O3 based on my experience with it. If a drop remains in the bottle at filling, the beer will be nasty oxidized. Jack nasty. As the O3 degrades to O2 in the bottle, it leaves a higher concentration of oxygen-something we normally struggle to avoid. Granted, with a triple evac filler, this should be purged...but if you're struggling with high airs, ozone will make matters infinitely worse.

[Sulfur]

20ppm

I know some people are using O3, or chlorine dioxide at low levels - circa 0.2 ppm is often used OK,

Cheers

You mean 20 ppm don't you?

[BMOOR]

You mean 20 ppm don't you?

I too was wondering how you would measure .2ppm?? we are using just 15 gallons of water, so that wouldn't be much chemical.
Dick, is that what you meant?

BTW, thanks for all the advice. I'd take more as well.
We are going to start with ClO2. If anyone has thoughts against that-shoot them out now.

thanks again

[Sulfur]

idd

From my idd manual
"Aseptic keg, bottle and can rinsing immediately prior to filling with beer is enhanced when 20-50ppm of stabilized ClO2 is used as a final cold rinse."

[dick murton]

I've heard of up to 5 ppm being used, but never as high as that, but really, I was giving figures for ensuring the rinse water is sterile. If you are using new bottles, then providing they come in good packaging, the bottles them selves will normally be extremely clean and sterile. The rinse water is mainly to remove and dust from the layer pads between the bottle. Because the bottles should have been kept dry prior to unpacking, any dust should be loose, and just wash off freely - hence minimal need to sterilise the bottle as such.

Hope that clarifies where I was coming from with these figures

Cheers