How to easily remove beer bottle labels.
Today is the eve of our first bottling day. So I soaked 50 bottles or so in hot/warmish water, a little bleach, and Tide. I let them sit for maybe 30-45 minutes, I had all sorts of bottles, The labels all came off really easily after soaking except for a 12pk of longtrail bottles i had. Whatever glue they used was impossible to get off. For the not so stubborn bottles, a bottle brush did the trick. It definitley took a little elbow grease and about 45 minutes (not including soak time). But I think I did a good job! I really think any soap, hot water and a good rough bottle brush should do the trick.
I have yet to venture into home brewing; right now I'm just a beer lover. Before getting married, I used to collect bottles from the different beers I drank. Since my wife wouldn't let me keep the bottles, I've moved to collecting only the labels in a scrapbook. Like you all, I've found some labels float off easily in a water/dish soap solution, while others are stubborn. I've run into some problem bottles with the Blue Moon winter sampler box I'm going through. I'm hoping that the Oxyclean trick will help me.
I'm not sure if this would apply to any beer bottle labels, but some labels have heat activated glue. I brew kombucha and reuse old GT's bottles and if you put the water on the outside, it causes an incredible mess and is pretty much a waste of time. The trick is to put water INSIDE and then microwave until it's nice and hot, take it out with oven mits, and the label peels off in, literally, one piece and no glue left over. I'm assuming that some of these bottles that require "gasoline and chemicals" probably have a similar form of adhesive.
Hope this info is of some use to someone 
I've found Oxyclean to be hands down the best label remover. It's also what I use for cleaning out the kettle, carboys, plate chiller, etc.
Oxyclean is definitly the way to go. If you have dirtly bottles you want to clean and take the labels off - Put about 1/8th of a tsp in each bottle. fill them with water. Then put the bottles in a bucket, put about 1/2 scoop of oxyclean in the bucket. fill with water and wait a day or two. the bottles will come out clean and the lables will fall right off. You may have to wipe some of the sticky residue off with a wash cloth and soap but that just wipes right off too.
Now you have clean bottles with out lables. Works great.
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