Cleaning And Sterillising Equiptment and Bottles Etc

[Phantom]

Couple of points come to mind......

The cheap steamer is a brilliant idea.......

As for cleaning out my T500 ? Everytime I read a thread about cleaning it etc, I think to myself......"I should take this apart and give it a good hook out", but every time I have a batch of wash to run, I just rinse out the boiler section with water and a cloth, then refill it with wash and run it....

It still keeps chucking out clean, flavourless spirit at 94% ABV.

After all, the boiling wash and resulting vapour are both hot and quite acidic, and while it might be a good idea to empty the column and put the copper through some weak vinegar solution to remove any of the verdigris build up, I just figure as long as it keeps working, why worry......

As for using the cheap steamer as a label remover ? Well yes, if the labels are stuck on with a glue that's water soluble, as it just melts it quicker. Where you get bottles that have been machine filled and labelled, particularly when the labels are of a "self adhesive" type, you often need some solvent of some kind to get the glue off (scrapping with a knife gets the paper off reasonably quickly).

The solvent I find does the job the best, is "Preptone". It comes from the Autosmart people and is designed to remove glue residue and deposits from car paint (used by the car spiving industry). It's hexane based so not for enclosed spaces (sniffers delight), but it does a brilliant job on the glue.

As for cleaning out carbon from filters for re-use, I'd have thought that should also work well, just as long as you have access for the pipe into the carbon, then an exhaust for the "polluted" steam. Then once the steam no longner smells of any kind of spirit/alcohol etc, it'd be fine to dry out in a low oven.

Probably gonna get one of the cheap steamers. After all, £16 isn't gonna break the bank is it......