Hi
I am looking to sterile bottle for the first time.
I have one of the little vacuum bottle rigs and have got a filter cartridge
and housing.
Can anybody give me directions on how to sterilise the equipment?
Obviously can't use boiling water etc or the plastic will melt.
If I cold sterilise (how) I presume I have to rinse the chemical??
steriliser from the equipment, but wont that make it non sterile again.??
What happens if the filter blocks half way through the bottling do I do a
complete sterilisation again??

Anton

"anton" > wrote in message
...
> Hi
> I am looking to sterile bottle for the first time.
> I have one of the little vacuum bottle rigs and have got a filter
> cartridge and housing.
> Can anybody give me directions on how to sterilise the equipment?
> Obviously can't use boiling water etc or the plastic will melt.
> If I cold sterilise (how) I presume I have to rinse the chemical??
> steriliser from the equipment, but wont that make it non sterile again.??
> What happens if the filter blocks half way through the bottling do I do a
> complete sterilisation again??

1. Boil enough water to flush the filter system twice through,
set aside to cool.
2. Use a sanitizer solution (One-Step would be a good one)
through the filter.
3. Flush the sanitizer with the boiled water from step one.

True sterility is pretty tough. You have to think about the bottles,
the corks, everything. Most sterile filters aren't. If the filter is
rated as to 'nominal' pore size, it's not, if it's rated in
'absolute', it can sterile filter. First make sure everything is very
clean; trying to sterilize/sanitize anything that isn't clean to begin
with is just asking for trouble.

All that said, assuming you want to reduce the chances of re-
fermentation you can treat the bottles like you would if you were
canning and rinse everything else that comes into contact with your
wine with a 1% sulfite and ~ 1/2% acid solution. If you mix a strong
sulfite solution but don't add some acid it's not effective, it just
smells bad. 1 teaspoon of citric acid per quart should be fine. Any
other acid will just make it stronger, so they are fine too. You
could do that to the bottles too.

I can't guarantee this will work, I don't sterile filter. It's what I
would do if I did though.

Joe

Suppliers have not heard of One Step will try for something similar after I
research it.

Will 2 flushes with water get rid of the chemical totally??
Should I dump a few bottles of the first wine that comes through the
filter??

Anton

"Casey Wilson" > wrote in message
news:T0CPh.4267$bM1.2963@trnddc03...
>
> "anton" > wrote in message
> ...
>> Hi
>> I am looking to sterile bottle for the first time.
>> I have one of the little vacuum bottle rigs and have got a filter
>> cartridge and housing.
>> Can anybody give me directions on how to sterilise the equipment?
>> Obviously can't use boiling water etc or the plastic will melt.
>> If I cold sterilise (how) I presume I have to rinse the chemical??
>> steriliser from the equipment, but wont that make it non sterile again.??
>> What happens if the filter blocks half way through the bottling do I do a
>> complete sterilisation again??
>
> 1. Boil enough water to flush the filter system twice through,
> set aside to cool.
> 2. Use a sanitizer solution (One-Step would be a good one)
> through the filter.
> 3. Flush the sanitizer with the boiled water from step one.
>

Hi Joe

Yes filter is rated as absolute.
Bottles are rated sterile straight from the factory. (until I cut the
packaging open anyway).
Same with the corks
Thanks for the tip on sulfite and acid solution Have a little pump bottle
washer so will probably wash them with this solution as I bottle
Want to bottle a sweet shiraz (about 20g/l of sugar)
Accidentally made one with a stuck ferment a couple of years ago and
everybody raved about it.
Bottled it unsterile but could not sleep at night waiting for friends to
phone me and say bottles of wine were exploding!!!!!
So this time fermented the wine dry.
Will filter to get the turbidity down so it will pass through a sterile
filter.
Add the grape concentrate then sterile bottle it.

Anton

"Joe Sallustio" > wrote in message
ups.com...
> True sterility is pretty tough. You have to think about the bottles,
> the corks, everything. Most sterile filters aren't. If the filter is
> rated as to 'nominal' pore size, it's not, if it's rated in
> 'absolute', it can sterile filter. First make sure everything is very
> clean; trying to sterilize/sanitize anything that isn't clean to begin
> with is just asking for trouble.
>
> All that said, assuming you want to reduce the chances of re-
> fermentation you can treat the bottles like you would if you were
> canning and rinse everything else that comes into contact with your
> wine with a 1% sulfite and ~ 1/2% acid solution. If you mix a strong
> sulfite solution but don't add some acid it's not effective, it just
> smells bad. 1 teaspoon of citric acid per quart should be fine. Any
> other acid will just make it stronger, so they are fine too. You
> could do that to the bottles too.
>
> I can't guarantee this will work, I don't sterile filter. It's what I
> would do if I did though.
>
> Joe
>

You don't need to sterilize. You only need to sanitize. One Step,
Iodophor, and StarSan are all commonly used sanitizers for this purpose.
StarSan tends to be preferred for a lot of people. Personally I like to use
Iodophor for this like bottles because Iodophor stains and is cheaper than
the others. You can't stain a bottle and since it's cheaper that's why I
use it for things like that. For things that are porous and could stain, or
for keeping a spray bottle of sanitizer on hand to spray tools or other
things I like to use Star San. It is stable as a sanitizer in solution in a
spray bottle for a longer period than Iodophor. I don't know much about One
Step but the one time I used it I personally didn't care for it.

True sterilizing takes heat and pressure. I know folks that maintain
cultures of yeast that sterilize their lab equipment for maintaining the
yeast cultures but for everything else they only sanitize. They sterilize
by using a pressure cooker for 20 minutes.

Regards,
Scott

> Will filter to get the turbidity down so it will pass through a sterile
> filter.


Good idea, you don't want to waste any of that capacity on the
absolute filter; prefiltering a good filter is always good practice.
If you want to store it after cleaning cheap 100 proof vodka may be
the way to go.

Joe