Sanitation on a production day

Acidity handles the hazard in the bottle. Sanitation handles everything that happens before the bottle closes.

Clean and sanitize are two steps

Cleaning removes soil. Sanitizing reduces organisms on an already clean surface. A sanitizer applied to a dirty surface does very little, which is a common mistake and the easiest to make when you are in a hurry.

Wash, rinse, sanitize, air dry. Wiping a sanitized surface with a cloth undoes it.

The order of the day

Set up and sanitize before anything comes out. Run allergen-free products before allergen-containing ones. Run mild before hot, because capsaicin transfers and a mild sauce made after a superhot is not mild.

Clean down fully at the end rather than at the start of the next day. Residue that sat overnight is harder to remove and it is what the next batch inherits.

Bottles and closures

New bottles from a sealed case are clean and are not sterile. Whether they need sanitizing depends on your process: a hot fill treats the interior surfaces as part of the fill, and a cold fill does not.

Closures are the surface people forget. The underside of a cap and the liner are in contact with the product and with the headspace, and on a cold-filled product they are not treated by anything unless you treat them.

Keep bottles covered until the moment you fill. An open case on a bench collects whatever is in the air of a kitchen that has been blending peppers.

What gets missed

Funnels, spigots, the underside of lids, the threads of a filling valve, and scales. Anything with a thread or a joint holds product and is the last thing to get cleaned properly.

Cloths. A cloth used through a production day spreads more than it removes. Use single use or launder between sessions, and never use one to dry a sanitized surface.

References