Some labels can be a pain to remove. I've tried soaking bottles in water with a little bit of dish soap but it doesn't really do much to break down the adhesive. What methods do you have for easily removing labels?
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OxyClean. The stuff works wonders. Fill a bucket with a scoop of OxyClean and hot water and let the bottles soak for about an hour. Most labels will simply slide right off; some will even float right off the bottles to the surface. The ones that don't will be easy to remove with a rag or sponge. You also generally never want to use dish soap or detergent on anything that will come in contact with your beer. Detergents often leave behind a residue or coating that can kill head retention. |
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For removing your own labels that you apply to your bottles, use a label with a hot-soak water soluable adhesive. When you're ready to reuse your bottles, a soak in hot water is all that's needed to slide the labels off. Removing labels from store-bought beverage bottles can be hit or miss because each bottler can use different label materials and different adhesives. By random sampling I've found some labels slide off in hot water, some will peel off after applying solvent, and others just never let go of the glass. I do have a cure-all that removes every label from every bottle: 500 degrees F in a ceramic kiln for about a hour will incinerate every organic compound in the label and adhesive. Some adhesives will etch the surface of the glass so a shadow may remain, but there's no label! Don't go much higher than 500F though or the bottle may start to soften and deform. |
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I've tried a couple of solutions, but the one that works best for me is an overnight soak in a big tub of water with a half-gallon of ammonia. The labels just slide right off. |
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I've used a big tub of water with some baking soda in it. I just tossed rinsed bottles in there as I accumulated them. Not sure how long it really took, since I didn't try and remove the labels for a while, but they came off really easily. As far as the amount of baking soda, maybe a teaspoon per 2 or 3 gallons? Not that much. |
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get a pair of these gloves boil water in your brewpot and put in as many bottles as you can fit and boil them for a few minutes, put the gloves on and squeeze the bottles in one hand and spin them, the labels will come right off. You can get through 48 in no time. |
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Soak with bleach for 1+ hours in initially hot water. Then scrap them off with a butter-knife like whittling a log- works great. |
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I usually find soaking them in my sterilising solution does an excellent job. |
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If you can afford it, its really nice to buy new glass. If not, you can get some labels off easier than others. You might have to experiment to see which ones are the easiest to remove. |
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Just soak in hot water most come off easily. Recycle the ones that dont. |
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For stubborn labels, try an organic solvent like acetone. It should remove most any common label and won't leave any residue. Rubbing alcohol may also work. |
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I like De-Solv-It. You can usually find it at Ace Hardware. Just spray to saturate label or residue, wait 10-20 min, and it should rub right off. It's made of citrus oils and other organic ingredients so it should be safe. It smells like oranges and has a slightly greasy feel but that washes off easily with soap and water. |
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