How to clean and sanitize your hydration pack

By "hydration pack," I mean Camelbak-type mechanisms.
The market is saturated with 'um. You can find them pretty much at most stores that carry athletic gear-Walmart, Meijer and mom-and-pop stores included.

We have two of these hydration packs. One is an authentic Camelbak (see the above) link. Other is from Target and Swiss-Gear brand. I wanted a hydration pack and Swiss-Gear was half the price of Camelbak.

 Both are similar...a backpack with a water pouch in it-which Camelbak calls an antidote, therefore, that's what I'm calling it in this blog entry--whether it's Camelbak or some other brand. My husband recently got into mountain biking and has been using one (or both as his biking buddy will use the other) on his adventures. Therefore, the packs have recently gotten a lot of use.

Recently, while putting them away, I noticed the older Camelbak has black mold in its tubing. A quick Google search revealed that this a big problem with any hydration pack.

So, how do we clean said black mold?
You can buy the authentic Camelbak Antidote Cleaning kit for $18.

Or you can build your own for about $5+6-pack of beer (for the bottle)

Our kit contains:
-Wine/pop/beer bottle (or any bottle with a small neck)
-Non-flavored anti-bacterial denture cleaner (crystals, tablets--all the same, right? by the way, I got the crystals for about $3. Don't buy it from Amazon! And I just realized they're mint flavored. Ah, well. My spouse will be drinking mint flavored water, I guess)
-Sippy cup cleaning brush (I did buy these from Amazon).
-bleach, if you are starting with a moldy antidote

First of all, if you are starting with mold-pour a little bit of bleach in your antidote. Let it sit for half a day or so--shaking the antidote once in a great while. Use your sippy cup brush to scrub the tubing. The best thing about the actual Camelbak brand is that all the pieces (bite lock thing) comes apart really easy. Our Swiss-Gear bite thing isn't unattachable--a trade-off of not getting "the real thing" I guess--so scrubbing the tubing is a little tricky (and harder to dry too). If there's mold in the middle of the tubing, be creative and use a metal coat hanger to make an extender. After bleach has sat for a while, rinse! Well!

 black mold

Now that you're done rinsing, hang it up to dry...put the antidote opening over the bottle neck to keep it open so the material dries faster.

After each use, keep the antidote clean via using denture cleaner...fill with water and throw in some crystals (or the tablet) and rinse. Use the sippy cup brush to scrub the inners of the tubing. 

Viola! Clean and sanitized hydration pack antidote. You're welcome. 

By the way, this morning I was on some mountain bike forum researching the best ways to clean a Camelbak antidote. Someone suggested to keep the pack in your beer freezer. Not to stereotype, but any guesses what the audience of this forum is?!