[madscientist]

Can you?  Should you?  How do you? 

Reason is i have a TON of bottles that need to be sanitized, and I really don't feel like doing it one by one... by one... by... well you get the idea.

[tygo]

If you have a sanitize cycle on your dishwasher it should work fine.  Just make sure that there's no detergent or rinsing agents in there.

[beersk]

By all means! Sanitize in your dishwasher.  You are so lucky to have that option, really wish I had that option.  Use the no soap/detergent setting and you should be set.

[wingnut]

I have not used the dishwasher to sanitize bottles, but I have used it to clean them. 

I would advise checking the first batch to see if there is any residue of sorts left inside the bottle (dried bits of ground up food for instance, or soap residue).  I had issues with gunk hidden iside the innards of the bottom of the dishwasher from the load before... getting sprayed and dried on the inside of a batch of bottles.  I also found that the long necks did not always allow the bottoms of the bottles to get clean if the bottle was tipped slightly.

However, if your dishwasher has a setting like my new one..."Sanitize" it essentially will pasteurize the bottles.  So if the bottles are already "clean" then I think it is a great idea!

Good luck!

[BrewArk]

Yup, this one's been discussed before.  Back when I did a lot of bottling, I would always run my bottles through the dishwasher like any other dishes.  When bottling day came I'd put a little bleach in the bottom of the dishwasher & run a sani cycle with just the "clean" bottles.  Never had any problems.

[ajk]

See also this thread.

[geobrewer]

My first 5 gallon batch, I used StarSan to sanitize my bottles. De-labeled with a hot water and detergent soak, washed them out with PBW, rinsed them out with clean water, then poured sanitizer into each bottle. I had to handle each bottle at least 4 times, NOT counting the delabeling part. What a pain.

My next two 5 gallon batches (both bottled this week) I used the dishwasher. I had to de-label about 30 more bottles. I made sure all of them were thouroughly rinsed out and clean as soon as they were empty, and I stored them upside down in 12-pack boxes so they'd stay that way. Come bottling day, I filled the dishwasher with bottles (held exactly 48 at a time!), and ran them through a "Hi-Temp wash, Sani-Rinse, and Heated-Dry" cycle. Took about an hour. Then I cracked the door to let them cool off. I figured since they're still upsidedown, they wouldn't get recontaminated. Once they were cool, I just pulled them out one at a time, and used the dishwasher door as my bottling platform.

On bottling day, I only had to handle each bottle once using this procedure before putting beer into the bottle.

I had thoughts about getting one of those squirt-the-sanitizer-into-the-bottle thingamagigs, but now I've changed my mind. I'm even wondering now if kegging would really save me that much more time.

Here they are, 96 bottles of malty goodness:

[Wheat_Brewer]

If you have the setting put them on the high heat dry, and high heat wash. 

On a side note I have a buddy who loves his homebrew but doesn't have a dishwasher.  He put about a tablespoon of water in each bottle, lays as many as he can in the microwave and lets the microwave go for about 5 minutes.  The steam from the water cleans everything inside and out!  It was actually an idea he had from sanitizing baby bottles.