Just got into DIYing after a few years dormant and I got to thinking about cleaning/sterilizing bottles and syringes.
-Would a swirl of isopropyl alcohol (or isopropanol) be a good idea? Or will it leave some kind of residue/taste?
Otherwise, would any type of cheap vodka work? (Same thought here: would some leave anything behind or not actually sterilize the bottle?)
If they have no taste lingering I just use isoprop.
To get the taste of flavours/liquids out I do a 3-step process:
first soak overnight in Dish soap/hot water, then rinse thoroughly
then soak over night in wate with vinegar, rinse thorougly
then use isoprop, rinse … ^^
Most stuff can be removed by that
On the other hand I don’t bother with sterilizing all too much. VG and PG both are antibacterial. We have a guy in our german vaper forum who conserved his deceased gold fish in PG. I think the fish is in there since 3 years now and shows no sign of degradation ^^. Getting lingering taste out is more important to me, when I reuse bottles…
Grain alcohol if you can get it. I clean mine in distilled water after they’ve been used by me. Just a good rinse out between flavors unless it’s something that hangs on. then good old dish soap and very hot rinse and the grain alcohol.
Do you rinse with water after isoprop?
Yup…
But as I said, I don’t really bother about sterile too much 
The isoprop is mostly to get the rest of marker or glue from labels off ^^
So complex. Hot water rinse. Warm water with dawn soak 15mins. Agitation. Water rinse. Then distilled water rinse. But then again we have pretty clean water here in the Pacific Northwest.
What is Grain alcohol, really? Could you give some examples? -I’ve heard of grain alcohol many times, but never in reference to alcohol in my country…
Grain alcohol is a form of pure alcohol which has been produced by fermenting and distilling grain. It is also known as ethyl alcohol or ethanol. In addition to being used in the production of alcoholic beverages, grain alcohol is also used as a solvent and in a variety of other industrial applications. Because grain alcohol is extremely potent, it should not be consumed straight, and people should never consume other alcohols such as methyl alcohol, because these substances are very toxic.
Everclear
We used to only be able to get that stuff in Nevada. Been 40 years since I’ve tasted, or should I say punished myself with that stuff.
You mean all this time I’ve been doing it wrong?
Haven’t seen a bottle of Everclear in AGES. Here in the nanny state of CA it’s near impossible to find, and when you do it’s usually only 80 proof. What’s the point of that?
My uncle and his neighbor started up a still-the neighbor is a retired chemist/absolute nutter. Their hooch is top-notch! It’s usually around 92-96% pure and gives a whole new dimension to the work “Tanked”!
i just clean them with warm water right after usage… no smells, no nothing… if i leave them non cleaned for some reason right away i just use new syringes … my beakers etc are made from glass so they get cleaned easily…
I’ve never needed an iso wash with any of my bottles-YET(Added the yet because I know eventually I’ll have a flavor that’s impossible to get out) I keep my bottles in two categories: Fruit and Bakery. That way I don’t get any errant odors/tastes blooming in my juices. A hot, soapy water soak with some unscented soap, followed by a really good cold water rinse(helps in getting the soap to rinse out) followed by a hot water rinse and swirl. If there’s any soap leftover from the cold water rinse it’ll bloom like a dandelion in the hot water. So far, I’ve yet to get any funk from prior juices or soap residue.
I usually do a Dawn ultra dish soap and hot water wash followed by a quick boil.
A good wash out with washing up liquid, a good rinse and then steeped in a solution of sterilising liquid, the type you use for babies bottles etc. with a quick rinse afterwards in boiled water and left to drip dry.
That gets your labels off too? What kind of labels do you use?
I’d love to spare myself the work of trying to get off all that jazz - thats why I went for markers, and those can be taken off with a bit of iso ^^
Agreed, warm water, agitation, done
I’m using some Avery mailing labels. I cheat a little when I use them so that I don’t have to try and scrub off a bunch of goo every time I peel a label. What I do is place the label on whatever I happen to be wearing- my denim shorts, tee shirt, whatever. The lint from the fabric covers a good amount of the adhesive, but doesn’t render the label useless. They stay put on the bottles, but don’t leave a slew of adhesives when I peel them off the bottle. If some adhesive does get left behind, hot soapy water usually gets rid of it. When I’ve had really stubborn adhesive, I cover the adhesive with some plain old cheap masking tape for about a week or so. When I peel the masking tape, it pulls the old adhesive off as well, leaving a clean bottle.(This was how I was able to reuse a bunch of bottles I’d saved from my orders to TBD Liquids) As a bonus, the masking tape makes for a decent label!
Thought I would toss this out here…
“Most” things I clean (just rinse the old juice out once or twice with water then let them soak in warm soapy water for a little bit the rinse once or twice with clean water)… my issue has been how to let them dry without cluttering everything up. I made a “drying rack” out of skewers, toothpicks and styrofoam, but it looks like mold wants to play with the wood skewers… not a good thing.
I just purchased this item off of Amazon, and used it for the first time tonight… Love it!
