I have 2 cases of 22 oz bottles (new) that I'll need to clean and sanitize by next weekend. Please share your best practices and can I clean ahead of time? I don't have a bottle tree so drying is a concern. Do I need to fully submerge all of the bottles in star san or just spray with a bottle?
Don't use all 22 oz. bottles. Put at least a 6 pack or three in 12 oz. bottles for the few beers that you'll inevitably want to sample before it's fully conditioned. At the very least, have one 12 oz. (Or smaller)bottle for the end of bottling which will inevitably end up short of 22 oz.
I use an old dishwasher rack to dry bottles. Clean ahead of time, sanitize right before bottling. A little star san residue is no problem. I would skip the cleaning on the new bottles and just sanitize, but that's just me.
Don't forget the priming sugar like I did on my first batch! Well, I didn't forget it. I added it, boiled the caps, got distracted, boiled off all the water and burned the caps, had to wait til the next day to get new caps by which time the yeast consumed the priming sugar, and then bottled unprimed beer. Then I drank 2 cases of flat stout and loved it!