Can I Sanitize My Wine Bottles With Hydrogen Peroxide? - Wine Making and Beer Brewing Blog

Ed,
I rinsed my bottles with a mild solution of hot water and hydrogen peroxide. could this hurt the wine when it is bottled??.
Name: Butch Bellas
State: PA
Hello Butch,
Using hydrogen peroxide in hot water as a rinse for your wine bottles will not hurt the wine in any way, but it should be pointed out that this is not an effective sanitizer. If your purpose is to sanitize the wine bottles, then you need to do something completely different.
If using hydrogen peroxide as a sanitizer it needs to be used as a 3% solution. This is the strength you will find it on the store shelf. When you dilute it with water you are making it too weak to do any good. It needs to be used straight out of the bottle to sanitize. As you can start to imagine this can be cost prohibitive.
A better and cheaper way to sanitize wine bottles is to use one of the many sanitizers we offer. The three most popular are PBW, StarSan, and Easy Clean. If used as direct there is no question that your wine bottles will get completely sanitized.
Any of these sanitizers can also be used to sanitize your equipment or or anything else your wine or beer comes in contact with. This will help to insure that you never have to experience a spoiled batch.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
———————————————————————————————————
Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

0 thoughts on “Can I Sanitize My Wine Bottles With Hydrogen Peroxide?”

My husband tasted one of my batches of Elderberry wine before I added Camden tablets at the bottling stage. He did not get a headache, which normally happens, with my bottled wine after adding Camden. Is this an unknown side effect of Camden?

Can you use Clorox (bleach) – as a sanitizer?

Mary, there is no known relation between Campden tablets, or sulfites in general at the dosages we are talking about in wine, and headaches. A typical sulfite level when using 1 Campden tablet per gallon is 50 – 60 P.P.M. in wine. Dried fruits such as apricots that you find on the store shelf typically have 500, 600 P.P.M., and sometimes up to a 1000.

Paul, yes you can use Clorox to sanitize equipment. The dosage is 1/4 per gallon of water. It does a dependable job of sanitizing. The real problem with it is that it does not like to rinse off readily. It likes to cling in the rinse. For this reason we recommend rinsing 3 times when using Clorox as it can easily interfere with a fermentation.

I collect wine bottles from friends to use to bottle our home wine. When I get them I rinse and scrub them and dry them out. When I go to bottle them, I rinse and scrub again, then boil then for 10 minutes each, then I use the clean pro on them. Am I going to far with the cleaning process?

Karin, you may be going just a little too far. The boiling is not necessary and I’m sure very time consuming. The Clean Pro SDH will sanitize them just fine. Scrubbing them again a second time is questionable but up to you. I depends on how well you think you cleaned them the first time.

Mary on January 31, 2013 at 11:19 pm said:

My husband tasted one of my batches of Elderberry wine before I added Camden tablets at the bottling stage. He did not get a headache, which normally happens, with my bottled wine after adding Camden. Is this an unknown side effect of Camden?
Paul on February 1, 2013 at 3:05 am said:

Can you use Clorox (bleach) – as a sanitizer?
Customer Service on February 1, 2013 at 2:14 pm said:

Mary, there is no known relation between Campden tablets, or sulfites in general at the dosages we are talking about in wine, and headaches. A typical sulfite level when using 1 Campden tablet per gallon is 50 – 60 P.P.M. in wine. Dried fruits such as apricots that you find on the store shelf typically have 500, 600 P.P.M., and sometimes up to a 1000.
Customer Service on February 1, 2013 at 2:18 pm said:

Paul, yes you can use Clorox to sanitize equipment. The dosage is 1/4 per gallon of water. It does a dependable job of sanitizing. The real problem with it is that it does not like to rinse off readily. It likes to cling in the rinse. For this reason we recommend rinsing 3 times when using Clorox as it can easily interfere with a fermentation.
Karin on February 4, 2013 at 3:20 pm said:

I collect wine bottles from friends to use to bottle our home wine. When I get them I rinse and scrub them and dry them out. When I go to bottle them, I rinse and scrub again, then boil then for 10 minutes each, then I use the clean pro on them. Am I going to far with the cleaning process?
Customer Service on February 5, 2013 at 1:59 pm said:

Karin, you may be going just a little too far. The boiling is not necessary and I’m sure very time consuming. The Clean Pro SDH will sanitize them just fine. Scrubbing them again a second time is questionable but up to you. I depends on how well you think you cleaned them the first time.