Sanitizing bottles with Meheen bottling machine

[mariomiraglia]

Hi,

I have a Meheen bottling machine, and i dont like the sanitizing system. It is supposed that the bottles come clean from the factory, so we need to sanitize them. Right now we are cleaning the bottles with Starzan, and then directly we fill. Im thinking now that first im gonna do a sanitizing with Peracetic acid and then rinse it with UV water. But to really sanitize bottles i assume the peracetic must be at least some time in contact.....

My question is: Whats the BEST way to sanitize bottles before Filling ???'


Thanks a lot,

Mario Miraglia
Odisea Brewing

Ecuador

[lhall]

When we used to run a Meheen, we sanitized with a keg filled with a solution of peracetic acid at about 150 ppm. We had a keg coupler with the locking handle removed, that you could press down and get a quick jet of sanitizer up into the bottles. The bottles are new and clean, just need to be rinsed. Rinsing the inside of the bottles also removes the little bit of cardboard dust from the layer dividers.

[Oliver@loeffler]

Using a PAA solution to pre-rinse bottles/cans ensures a clean environment for the product and increases the shelf life. We recommend 50 - 75 ppm of a PAA solution. The reason for rinsing is primarily to remove the dust. To avoid any biological contamination PAA is added to the rinse water. In addition, the PAA solution will sanitize the inner surface of the bottle / can. Rinsing afterwards with water is more a question if the PAA is legally considered as a non-rinse sanitizer. In case you are legally not required to rinse out the PAA I would not do it. In this case it is an additional step which is not necessary. In case a few small droplets of the PAA solution get into the beer, it is not a problem. The PAA solution will break down to components which naturally are present in beer.