I recently passed 11,000 bottles filled and capped, so my process is about as fine-tuned & efficient as I can possibly make it. Immediately after pouring bottles get a dump and rinse, 2nd rinse & scrub with a bottle brush, 3rd rinse and left in the dish rack to dry overnight. Once dry they're put upside down in a case box to keep dust out, when the case is full plastic wrap over the bottles, case taped shut and stored in the ready area. Without counting I'm guessing I have somewhere around 35 to 40 cases of bottles, at the moment most are full, in fact I had to resort to using old twist top Coors bottles when I bottled yesterday as I didn't have enough of any one type of bottle to do the batch. One thing I won't do unless forced to by circumstances, is use more than one type of bottle per batch, makes filling and capping way too much of a b****.
do you ever have issues of hard to remove yeast/mineral deposits in the bottles? i have been checking mine over and using PBW/alk wash on ones where i see problems and it removes the little built up yeast(?) deposits which seem to occur more with some yeasts than others.
and for everyone, yes i do and always have done a good 3x swirl and washout with good amount of hot water after i pour a beer. i think i had one yeast or brew that left a lot of these "stains" a few months ago and didn't really diagnose it at the time. might have been WLP550.
i currently have created enough 500ml/568ml bottles to cover 2 full brews (18Lx2 - ~36L), then i tend to do a higher gravity brew in .33L bottles, of which i have about 24 litres, trying to leave some lie/eliminate excess of the .330s.
my process is:
1. wash out bottles after pour, store upright (i dont want to chip the mouths/i wash them out thoroughly later) in boxes
2. organize enough bottles to cover a bottling day for intended beer.
3. scan bottles to see if any have those scum/yeast/debris stains the water did not remove
4. set aside ones that do have this issue and PBW them for a few hours.
5. rinse them out and use iodophor to sanitize all bottles needed. let them settle/drip out.
6. spray a sheet of tinfoil with iodophor and cover the tops with a small wrap of sanitized tinfoil.
7. put them back in the boxes and use within max 3 days to bottle the beer.
maybe kinda wasteful but i like to break up the bottle management session from bottling day so its not a 3 hour event.
i have a homemade bottling wand type thing i made with a ~5 inch length of tubing with a lead-free plumbing line handle-tap in the middle to turn it on or off.off