How Do You Clean Your Decanters?

While going through my evening ritual of cleaning the inside of one of my decanters with a brush and hot water, and then shaking the hell out of it for a few minutes more, also with nothing but clear, hot water, I began to wonder how other people handle this situation. And how do people who routinely decant leftovers into half-bottles like I do clean them, too? Do they, too, use only hot water and shake the little devils a hundred times or so and hope that does the job? I don't know why I do what I'm doing to my decanters and 375s, but I suspect I'll go on doing it out of habit as long as I'm above ground unless somebody tells me about a better way, with proof that it works. What do you do? And why do you do it?

I clean a lot of used wine bottles to refill with my wine. Rinse the bottle with hot water as soon as it's empty and drain. Then just a bit of automatic dishwasher detergent and fill with hot water. If there is something staining it at this point, allow to soak. Drain, rinse again, fill to over flowing and set upside down to drain.

Howie, I do the same thing without detergent. I've never had a stain in the many years I've been doing this.

I use the automatic dishwater detergent because some of the bottle people save for me have dried residue, which it will remove and it kills germs. Since wine will be stored in the bottles for long periods, sanitizing is a good thing.

I rinse the half bottles in hot water and drain; and put the decanter in the dishwasher. Have never had a problem with the decanter holding soap or anything to taint the wine.

Normally, I just rinse it out with hot water. and let it drain. If it is stained, I fill with hot water, drop in a denture cleaner tablet and let it sit overnight, then rinse the hell out of it. That gets them sparkling clean.

[Jenise]

Efferdent!

Like others, I generally just use hot water. If stain or film develops, I use OxiClean, which is basically hydrogen peroxide (as are most denture cleaners I think)/.

Hardest thing is drying the ones that don't fit on decanter drying stand and don't have level top so they can stand, hard to keep condensation off inside. I have drying "wand" but find ineffective.