Ammonia Question

woo first post!

so i was told to get ammonia to remove labels from bottles, so i had my buddy grab me ammonia from ACE hardware. I have used it and it removes labels nicely and i have bottled one beer and am currently soaking more bottles in it....

now i'm looking over some things in The complete joy of home brewing, and charlie points out a difference between household ammonia and quarternary ammonia, and how the quarternary kind should not be used in homebrewing. so i looked and saw that my ace hardware stuff is janitorial strength. are my bottled beers and the bottles that i am currently soaking in trouble?!?!

Im not sure if your in trouble or not but I can tell you that unscented oxiclean works well and usually will make labels fall off on their own within a few hours without going to something like ammonia. I know that doesn't answer your question but just thought I would pass along what I use.

I think the janitorial strength ammonia is household ammonia. I have no idea what quarternary ammonia is and the googles were not much help when I attempted to find out. The general gist of what I did find seemed to indicate that the household ammonia was a good cleaning agent and the quaternary ammonia was more of a sanitizer only. I have used household ammonia many times for cleaning bottles and it worked very well. What was Charlie's objection to using the quaternary stuff? Did he provide any specifics? I like that the household ammonia leaves no residue on the bottles. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Quaternary ammonia is a sanitizer used in the food service industries. It is generally not recommended for homebrew application because it is not a "no-rinse" sanitizer.

Janitorial strength ammonia could simply be more concentrated household ammonia (ammonia/water or ammonium hydroxide depending on the manufacturers label). Posting the active ingredient from the label or the brand of cleaner you are using would be far more useful than stating "janitorial strength"

You can use starsan for this, too. It will not only sanitize, but over time it will eat labels away, as well as the paint on some bottles.

I'ts a bit more labor intensive, but I've gotten the best results with a short soak in hot water, maybe some soap....then I put the bottle under the sink with hot running water and scrape with a knife. Those labels come off immediately, and are spotless.

I use oxyclean with great success. Just put hot water and unscented oxyclean in a bucket and sink the bottles in the solution, in 24 hours the labels with either fall off or will be easy to pull off.

Supermarkets also carry household ammonia. In the cleaning supplies aisle.

Something tells me that if you wash and sanitize your bottles AFTER using the ammonia you will be totally fine. You could take a dump into a bottle and as long as you wash and sanitize it will be fine.

Bret86944 said:

Something tells me that if you wash and sanitize your bottles AFTER using the ammonia you will be totally fine. You could take a dump into a bottle and as long as you wash and sanitize it will be fine.

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And IMO you would be correct, but also IMO you really only need to rinse and sanitize the bottles after using ammonia. There's probably something else in the household stuff along with the ammonia. Very possibly a surfactant and maybe a small amount of detergent could be in it. In any case, it would be prudent to rinse the bottles after the ammonia soak followed up with some no-rinse sanitizer like Star San.

I think the janitorial strength ammonia is household ammonia.

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It's just more concentrated.