A glass washer recirculates one tank of heated detergent water over the rack and then rinses with fresh hot water, and it is that rinse that sanitises: FSANZ says commercial machines should generally exceed 80C in the sanitation rinse.
Skai Solutions answers the phone for restaurants, cafes and takeaways in Australia and New Zealand, which puts us in a lot of bars at changeover. This page explains how the machine actually works, where it beats a dishwasher and a sink and where it does not, and what the Australian food safety guidance really says about temperature, which is not what most suppliers tell you.
A glass washer is a single tank machine. It fills a tank, heats it, recirculates that same detergent water over the rack through rotating wash arms, then pushes a separate shot of fresh hot water through the rinse arms at the end. The tank water stays in the machine for many cycles. The rinse water is new every time, and it is the rinse that does the sanitising work.
That architecture explains almost every fault in the family. If the tank will not fill, nothing happens. If the tank fills but the element is dead, you get a wash that cleans nothing and a rinse that sanitises nothing. If the wash arms cannot spin because a glass has tipped into them, the cycle runs its full length and the rack comes out dirty. If the rinse boiler never reaches temperature, the glasses come out hot, wet and smeared, and that is the one operators notice last because the machine looks like it is working.
Three ways to get a glass clean, and they are not interchangeable.
| Glass washer | Commercial dishwasher | Double sink by hand | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is built for | Glassware only, gentle wash, fast turnaround under a bar | Plates, pans, cutlery, heavy soil | Anything, in small numbers |
| Wash action | Low pressure, so glasses do not chip or etch | High pressure, which is what removes baked food | Hand and cloth |
| What goes wrong with glasses | Little, if the water is right | Etching and clouding over time, and grease transfer from plates | Smearing, and inconsistent temperature |
| Where it belongs | Under the bar, where the glasses are used | In the kitchen | A backup, and a legal fallback |
| Who should pick it | Any venue pouring beer, or turning over more than a rack an hour | Venues whose glass volume is low and whose plate volume is not | Very small operations, and anyone whose machine is down |
The honest line most pages skip: if you pour very little beer and wash two dozen glasses a service, a glass washer is not the right buy and your kitchen dishwasher plus a careful hand wash will serve you fine. The case for a dedicated machine is beer, volume and speed, in that order. Grease from a plate load is what kills head retention on a beer glass, and a shared machine is how grease reaches a glass.
This is where almost every page gets it wrong, so here is the Australian answer from the source. Appendix 6 of Safe Food Australia, FSANZ's guide to the food safety standards, fourth edition, February 2023 says in terms: "There is no prescribed method for sanitation by dishwasher." The same appendix says businesses "are not legally obliged (under the food safety standards) to clean and sanitise at the temperatures or times specified below".
So there is no Australian legal number. The duty is the outcome, that the glass is sanitised. What FSANZ then offers, as information rather than law, is the figures from four other standards, and these are the ones worth knowing because they are what the machine in front of you was engineered against.
| Standard FSANZ names | The figures |
|---|---|
| AS 4674-2004, Australian | Sinks used for sanitising should deliver hot water of at least 80C. Dishwashers and glasswashers should wash and rinse in one continuous operation, contain no brushes, and only run the sanitising cycle when the water is at sanitising temperature |
| DIN 10512, European one tank machines | 60C to 65C wash in the tank, 80C to 85C rinse, where no sanitiser chemical is used |
| US Food Code 2020 and NSF 3 | Minimum 74C wash and rinse for stationary rack single temperature machines. 66C to 71C wash and 82C rinse for other types |
| US Food Code 2020, by hand | Immersion at a minimum 77C for at least 30 seconds |
FSANZ's own general line is that commercial machines "should be able to use high temperatures (greater than 80C) in their sanitation rinse cycles", and that you should run the program the manufacturer specified for sanitising rather than the fastest one on the dial. Note what the DIN figures imply about a glass washer under a bar: a single tank machine is expected to rinse between 80C and 85C. If yours is not reaching that, it is not sanitising, whatever the cycle light says.
What to do with this, practically: buy a thermolabel or a probe, run one rack, and write the rinse temperature on the cleaning schedule once a week. That record is also the thing that answers an inspector, because the Australian duty is to show the outcome, and a weekly reading is evidence while a cycle light is not.
Two completely different causes, and the fix depends on which one you have. Fill a cloudy glass with warm vinegar for a few minutes. If the cloud lifts, it is scale and it is your water. If it does not, it is etching, which is permanent damage to the glass surface and those glasses are finished.
Scale comes from hardness, and the national picture matters because it decides how hard your machine has to work. The NHMRC Australian Drinking Water Guidelines rate 60 to 200 mg/L total hardness as good quality, 200 to 500 mg/L as increasing scaling problems and over 500 mg/L as severe scaling, and they state that major Australian reticulated supplies run from about 5 mg/L to about 380 mg/L. Your supplier publishes your figure. Above 200 mg/L, filtration on the feed stops being an upgrade and becomes the thing that keeps the rinse boiler alive.
Etching is the opposite problem. It is caused by water that is too soft combined with too much detergent and too high a wash temperature, running for years. If you are in a soft supply and your glasses go permanently foggy, turn the detergent dose down before you buy anything.
Anything past that list, particularly a machine that trips the circuit or leaks from the base, stops being operator work. The same logic applies that applies to a commercial dishwasher that will not run: get the model and serial off the plate and describe the symptom precisely, because that decides whether a part arrives on the first visit.
A cafe that pours no beer and washes cups through a kitchen machine does not need one. Nor does a venue with no plumbing or power under the bar, because the install cost outruns the benefit. And nobody should buy one to solve a staffing problem, because it still needs loading, emptying and descaling. If your constraint is hours rather than glassware, look at where the hours actually go first, which usually turns out to be the phone and the floor rather than the sink. There is a rough benchmark for that at sales per labour hour, and the machine side of the decision is at commercial dishwasher cost in Australia.
A glass washer cycle is short, and the bar is the one place in a venue where the phone and the customer are the same two metres apart. Whoever is pulling a rack is the person not answering. Skai Solutions answers the phone for restaurants, cafes and takeaways in Australia and New Zealand, takes the booking or the order and puts it where your team will see it, with setup taking about five days. If your phone mostly carries supplier calls rather than bookings, a basic message-taking plan is the right buy and it is not us.
How does a commercial glass washer work?
It is a single tank machine. It fills a tank, heats it, recirculates that detergent water over the rack through rotating wash arms, then pushes a separate shot of fresh hot water through the rinse arms at the end. The tank water stays in for many cycles and the rinse water is new every time, so the rinse is what does the sanitising.
What temperature should a glass washer rinse at?
There is no Australian legal figure. FSANZ states in Appendix 6 of Safe Food Australia that there is no prescribed method for sanitation by dishwasher. The standards it names for consideration put a one tank machine at 60C to 65C wash and 80C to 85C rinse under DIN 10512, and FSANZ says machines should generally use temperatures above 80C in the sanitation rinse.
Can I wash glasses in a commercial dishwasher instead?
You can, and for a low volume venue it is the sensible choice. The trade off is that a dishwasher washes at high pressure to shift baked food, which etches glassware over time, and grease carried over from plates is what kills head retention on a beer glass. If you pour beer in volume, a dedicated machine under the bar earns its place.
Why is my glass washer not filling with water?
Check the isolating tap first, then the feed filter, then the float or pressure switch telling the machine the tank is already full. The tap is the cause more often than anyone admits, particularly after a plumber or a cleaner has been in. Only after those three is it a fill valve.
Why are my glasses cloudy after washing?
Fill one with warm vinegar for a few minutes. If the cloud lifts it is scale from hard water, and the fix is filtration on the feed. If it does not lift it is etching, which is permanent and caused by soft water plus too much detergent and too high a wash temperature over years. Those glasses cannot be recovered.
How hard is Australian water, and does it matter for glassware?
It matters a great deal and it varies enormously. The NHMRC Australian Drinking Water Guidelines rate 60 to 200 mg/L total hardness as good quality, 200 to 500 mg/L as increasing scaling problems and over 500 mg/L as severe scaling, and they state that major Australian reticulated supplies run from about 5 mg/L to about 380 mg/L. Ask your water utility for your figure.
Does a glass washer have to sanitise by law in Australia?
The duty is the outcome rather than a method or a number. FSANZ says businesses are not legally obliged under the food safety standards to clean and sanitise at any specified temperature or time, and that there is no prescribed method for sanitation by dishwasher. In practice, record a weekly rinse temperature reading, because a record is evidence of the outcome and a cycle light is not.