How to easily remove beer bottle labels.
I've found that labels can be easily removed from beer bottles by soaking the bottles in water and baking soda. I'm not sure how much baking soda is required, but I added about a tablespoon to 2 cups of water. After about 30 minutes of soaking, I was able to slide the label right off of the bottle. It worked great.
I have also heard that steaming the bottles or soaking them in vinegar works.
I wish I had found this our earlier. My last homebrew was put in bottles with all sorts of third party labels.
I drink a lot of New Belgium and have found that their labels come off extremely easy. I just run them under some water, rinsing them out at the same time, and the label peels back really nice.
i just soak mine in hot water, peel off the paper and wipe off the adhesive. some of the beers i drink though (stone brewing) have painted on labels. I was thinkin about using acetone or somethin on those. Any better ideas?
Tolerance. I have some bottles like that, a Rogue brewery bottle from Oregon and a few 22oz. Red Stripe bottles. I just use those for beers that I won't be taking anywhere. If I couldn't handle the paint on it, I'd go buy a case from the brew store.
Oh yeah, btw, I just soak them in my dish water after the dishes are done. It's usually still hot and I let them go for about 20-30 minutes. Then the label peals off clean and I hit it with the scrubby briefly to take off the glue. I do a few a night this way and it's really not a hassle at all. Although I've found Smithwick's labels are more stubborn than Harp's. They're from the same brewer! Oh well.
Depends on whose bottles they are.
Some come right off, some take some scrubbing.
I don't like to see the glue on the bottles I reuse.
I get my water as hot as I can, let 'em soak, and peel em.
Then I take a scratch pad and scrub the glue off.
Have you ever seen some bodies face when you offer
them a home brew and the bottle looks nasty?
Not a good way to get some one intrested into home brewing.
I clean 'em off pretty good.
Wipe em off with a paper towel too, remove the water spots,
I know I wont drink out of a nasty looking bottle.
But maybe thats just me.
Amen, they can have the One Step sanitizer spots on them because that's clean to me, but someone else doesn't know that it's sanitizer and just looks nasty. I only share my "good looking" bottles. I keep the painted ones at home for myself and also the ones that I haven't bothered to take the label off of, yet. I still have plenty to share.
Personally no one ever comes to my house to have a homebrew and is handed a bottle anyway. I always open and pour it into a chilled mug then hand them the mug. Bottle conditioned homebrews always have yeast sediment on the bottom and no matter how many times I tell people that don't homebrew this they still seem to forget and pour the whole damn thing in. In my opinion it's being a good host to hand them a properly poured mug of homebrew rather than explain again that no you probably shouldn't just drink it out of the bottle. A lot of my bottles still have old labels on them (obviously not for any competition samples.) After all it's whats inside that counts the most, I'm not trying to market them.
I've sent a bottle a piece home with co-workers to have them evaluate the beer and give instructions in an email to everyone so they know what to expect. The batch that I shared used a very flocculent yeast strain so I didn't need to worry about people having to decant it. I just told them to be sure to pour it into a glass using one smooth motion so as not to disturb the sediment on the bottom. Some of the bottles I shared had labels on them and some didn't. Next year I'll have enough cleaned bottles to send them off right. Maybe I'll even include a ribbon.
DUde I got these bottles.. I forget but I wish I knew what brewery.. they are ovular shaped and green in color.. I think it was an english beer... anyway... the label was almost like mettalix and the label was a huge chore to remove.. I had to use all kinds of chemicals and gasoline... eventually goof off woorked.
Label removal depends on the company that bottled the brew. I live in Michigan and some local brewer labels magically fall off after a 20 minute soak in hot water. Other local brewers use plastic laminar labels and a silicon type adhesive. If I soak them for the next 20 years they still will not come off. I have found that most German beer labels come off easily. So...if it does not come off easily, pass that brand. When I found a type of beer that had easily removable labels, I spread the word at work and people were willing to donate their bottles to a homebrewer. That shows the generosity of fellow beer drinkers when you consider that bottle deposit is 10 cents a bottle here in this state.
I soak the bottles in PBW, and that takes the label off pretty good.
I might be the only person who leaves them on? I even leave on my old batch number labels I like the running history on each bottle. I have some that are just lucky bottles, never a bad batch on em!
I'm a photographer and sometimes I need to remove "painted on" labels from clear bottles. I've found that using a utility knife blade works quite well (scrapping the paint off). I've never had to do this for a beer bottle but I don't see why it wouldn't work.
Also, you might consider using adhesive removers often used in the hair replacement industry. You can do a Google search for toupee tape remover or similar searches for removing ultra tough paper labels.
Otherwise I've found that the baking soda/water mixture works well. Though the toughest labels were by far from Rouge. They must have something in the water that makes the beer great and the glue extra sticky.
Hope any of this helps.
Oh man, chemicals and gasoline?? Well if it works I guess it doesn't matter how you got there but I've found Oxyclean and hot water to be the easiest method. Let them soak for a couple of hours and they come right off. Sometimes they slip off by themselves and just float to the top of the bucket.
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