Wine Glasses in the Lower Rack.

[MrX]

There's absolutely no way that enzymes could cause glass to etch.
The most likely culprits are base ingredients that are creating alkali wash solution. That will definitely etch glass.
I suspect that the better products that don't etch are much better buffered and maintain the correct pH throughout the cycle.

Cloudiness can be caused by redeposition of calcium and magnesium from incorrectly softened water if you're in a hard water area.

You can test if this is the problem by hand washing the glass with a little spirit vinegar or lemon juice.

 

[miele_ge]

what is spirit vinegar?

never heard of it. the two that have been etched could have been from when I lived with my mom. she has very hard water that isn't treated.

 

[MrX]

It's just clear vinegar with a very high level of acetic acid.

You could try cleaning your glasses with balsamic but... might get a bit sticky *lol*

Any type of vinegar or lemon juice would do the job.
Just leave the glass soaking in it for a few minutes and if the cloudiness disappears, it's limescale deposits and not etching

Unfortunately, there's very little you can realistically do to reverse etching.

You may be able to use a waxy polish to cover up the scratches if it's a piece of collectable glass / display glass, but if it's something you drink from, that's not going to work.

....

As for lower rack washing of glasses - it entirely depends on your dishwasher.
The main reason in the past was that there was an exposed element in the bottom of dishwashers in the olden days used for hot air drying and also for heating the water.

The radiated heat could crack glasses and melt plastic.

Any decent modern machine has an encapsulated element that the water's pumped through.

Older machines also tended to rely on very high pressure jets where as newer ones, certainly in Europe anyway, tend to rely more on cascading a lot of water more gently. It's more about flow than pressure.[this post was last edited: 10/17/2013-18:25]

 

[jerrod6]

My dw has fold down racks in the lower basket that are designed to hold wine glasses. I wash my everyday wine glasses using these racks. For my better glasses I use the China/Crystal cycle which has a low temp of around 113f. For my best Crystal I wash by hand.

 

[maytagbear]

Spirit vinegar

is what we in the States call distilled white vinegar.

LAwrence/Maytagbear

 

[MrX]

Crystal shouldn't be washed in a machine because it can't handle temperature shocks.

Most cycles include pretty hot water. Also residual heat drying cycles common on Euro machines will risk cracking crystal.

You might get away with it on a cool wash with a top of the line detergent. However, it's not advisable and your glasses will come out wet on those cycles so you may as well hand wash them anyway.

Washing glasses is fairly quick though so it's not that much of a chore.

 

[davey7]

I'm still trying to figure out how my mom's old dishwasher broke heavy glasses in the top rack years later for a friend of hers.