Reviews you can trust.
See why.Bottle Brushes
Scrub your bottles and carafes—and even your salad spinner—to a whole new level of clean.
Published Jan. 30, 2019.
Top Picks
See Everything We Tested
What You Need To Know
A bottle brush is designed to fit into spaces a standard sponge can't. This cleaning tool—basically a wand with a brush head on one end—fits easily into tall, slim, and narrow-mouth bottles, such as water bottles, coffee carafes, and baby bottles. Curious to see how well they worked, we gathered five popular, widely available models, all priced $15.00 or less, and got to testing.
First, we wanted to see if each brush could fit into a variety of bottles, including our winning glass and plastic water bottles, a narrow-mouthed glass bottle, a baby bottle, a glass carafe, and a stainless-steel coffee carafe. (The answer: Yes, though none of the brushes fit into an exceptionally narrow-mouthed glass water bottle with a roughly ¾-inch opening.) Then we used each brush to remove sticky honey from inside each container and to scrub smoothie remnants from water bottles. We washed each brush multiple times, checking for wear and tear, odor retention, and leftover food particles throughout testing. We also had volunteers use the brushes at home for a week.
Overall, these brushes worked well, remained odor-free, and proved themselves essential cleaning tools. More than one tester said that using a bottle brush took their cleaning to the next level, especially in scrubbing heavily stained coffee carafes. And while most brushes performed well, one was woefully inadequate—and another wowed us.
A Medium-Size Brush Head Offered the Best Coverage
Bottle brushes have two key elements: the scrubber head, with all the bristles, and the handle, which is typically a long, thin wand. Heads ranged in length from 1.88 to 9 inches, and size greatly impacted scrubbing ability.
We wanted a brush that could cover maximum area with minimal effort. The longest brush head, at 9 inches, resembled a big, fluffy cat's tail and was too long to really move around inside containers. With bristles all over the place, except on the all-important brush tip, this model made it difficult to scrub a specific spot and was ultimately inadequate.
Another brush had the opposite problem. Its petite head was the shortest in the lineup, and one tester compared it to using a very fine brush to paint trim on a wall. “You kind of have to work it around,” she said, because it doesn't cover a lot of area at once.” On the plus side, the small brush head made it easy to target specific spots inside a container that needed extra scrubbing.
Our favorite brush was a happy medium: It had a 3.75-inch head that was small enough to easily maneuver in most spaces but still large enough to scrub a sizable area at once.
Shorter Bristles Were Essential
Naturally, bristles were an important fac...
Everything We Tested
Highly Recommended
- Handle design: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Brush head design: 3 stars out of 3.
This brush had an ideally sized brush head—neither too short nor too long—with bristles that were just under 1 inch long and optimally positioned on both the brush head's sides and tip, allowing us to effectively scrub most containers we tried. The rigid handle had a large, rubber-coated grip that made it comfortable to hold. One tester said this brush was “remarkably easy to rinse” and “seems clean and non-icky,” but it's also dishwasher-safe for even simpler cleaning.
Recommended
- Handle design: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Brush head design: 3 stars out of 3.
The bristles covered the brush head tip and were rigid enough to efficiently scrub containers, and we liked the firmness of the beechwood handle. One tester said that even though “the entire bottom surface” of her coffee carafe was tinted brown, “after a few days of scrubbing with the brush,” she could “see the silver again.” This brush was fairly comfortable to use, but the untreated bare wood felt slightly rough on our hands. The bristles trapped some kale particles, though they weren't very noticeable and eventually rinsed out.
- Handle design: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Cleanup: 3 stars out of 3.
- Brush head design: 2 stars out of 3.
This brush head was small, just under 2 inches, so while it was “very good at directing attention in a small spot,” testers had to “work it around” more than other models to fully clean the insides of containers. It had a silicone-coated handle that was comfortable to hold, and it was rigid enough that it remained sturdy and strong when pressed against containers. It was also easy to clean since we could put it in the dishwasher.
- Handle design: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Brush head design: 3 stars out of 3.
This model resembles our winner, but with a few key differences: The handle was more flexible, which sometimes made it harder to maneuver during cleaning, and the head was slightly smaller. However, testers found it easy to fit into a variety of bottles, with bristles firm enough to sweep away debris. It did retain some specks of kale, but those were easy to wash off this dishwasher-safe model.
Not Recommended
- Handle design: 1 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Cleanup: 2.5 stars out of 3.
- Brush head design: 1 stars out of 3.
This brush's head was 9 inches long and resembled a bushy cat's tail, which made it hard to move around once placed inside a bottle and effectively useless at scrubbing. The bristles were also the longest in the lineup and were too flexible to scrub well. While that flexibility could be an advantage for certain containers, such as a wine decanter with a narrow neck and a broad base, it was more of a nuisance in our tests. Additionally, this brush didn't have many bristles on the tip, so we couldn't clean container bottoms easily. It also had a thin wire shaft with a handle made of hard plastic, which was uncomfortable to hold, and it was so long—16 inches overall—that users complained about limited storage options. Finally, it retained a few stray kale particles and was more difficult to clean because of its oversize brush head.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
0 Comments
