Removing labels from commercial bottles

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mjs483

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Anyone have any neat tricks to make removing the labels off of commercial bottles easy? I tried soaking them in water over night but in the morning the labels hadn't budged! :confused:
 
I soaked some in water with Oxi Clean in it. Which is just washing soda I think. The labels started floating off within 30 minutes or so. All the labels came off easy. Some times a little glue would be left behind, but could be removed with just a wash rag.
 
Yeah, the oxiclean suggestion is a popular one. It worked well for well, though there is one local brewery (Big Boss) that must do something different with their labels, since nothing can get them off.
 
I use ammonia/water solution and soak bottles overnight.

A neat trick I picked up here at HBT (mostly) is to do one bottle at a time. Take a 2 liter soda bottle (or use a Utz Pub Mix bottle from costco, which is nice cause you can screw the top on while the bottle is soaking.) and fill it with the ammonia solution just to where you need it to be filled. Fill the bottle that needs soaking with plain water and drop it in.

Its less tedious to do it one at a time.
 
Hot water w/ oxiclean, 2 hours. Peel the labels and drop the bottles back in for 1 hour. Rinse.

Unless the labels are plastic, then I slowly add hot water until they start to come loose, then peel and add oxiclean.
 
+1 for ammonia and water. let it sit overnight and most of them slide right off. sierra nevada labels tend to be a pain, but most others come off with no residue.
 
Almost all of the bottles I've taken the labels off of so far have come off with a couple minutes of soaking in hot tap water. The glue left behind scrubs off easily with a sponge. I did a batch this weekend with some Pike brewing company bottles and they came off the fastest with absolutely no glue residue.
 
Some bottles are just a b***h to get labels off of. Pete's Wicked Ale is the worst in my experience, and so I've given up trying (and buying their beer also) - the result is not worth the effort. Sam Adams bottles are famously easy to give up labels - a few minutes of hot tap water does it, so they are preferred by many (plus they fill them with a darn fine brew).
 
SteveM said:
Some bottles are just a b***h to get labels off of. Pete's Wicked Ale is the worst in my experience, and so I've given up trying (and buying their beer also) ....

Same with Widmer, PITA
-ander
 
I'm another oxyclean user... 24 hours in initially hot water/with oxyclean has gotten the toughest ones loose...Honestly if I think to check on it, the majority are clean within 1 or 2 hours...
 
RichBrewer said:
Try this:
I use this to remove labels one at a time as I empty the bottles. Works great and doesn't use much solution.

Cool solution for individual bottles...

Though I rarely have just one to do, unless I want to save the label on something cool. Usually I wait til I have a dozen or so and do 'em all in a bucket.
 
How much oxyclean do you guys use? I must not use enough because some labels just don't budge for me no matter how long they soak. I do start with hot water. Also, sometimes the bottles get tiny crystals on the glass which need a bottle brush to remove. anyone seen this action?
 
I use a couple of scoops in 4 gallons of hot water...

The worst bottles I've ever dealt with were O'fallon Pumpkin Beer
Pumpkin-Logo.gif


They're double laminated labels. The top label took 24 hours, and the underlable took an additional 24...and had a little gook that had to be scrubbed off.

No crystals, but some white residue on the glass...but that comes off with a thorough rinsing.
 
I found that having the bottles soak in a cooler full of ice water for a few days makes the labels slip off before you even pick the bottles up!
 
I fill the sink of with water and a bit of bleach. Submere the bottles and an hour of 2 later most labels are floating. Some brands of beer are a pain and i dont even bother trying - like alexander keiths - i think they use super glue!
 
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