drbell

Recipes 

Hi folks,

I have finished the label experiment to find out the best way of attaching labels to home brew beer bottles, in terms of appearance and ease of removal.
The full results are available in 3 posts on my blog:
http://bellsbeer.wordpress.com/

I hope its ok to post links to outside sites on this forum, but I don't want to dump all the results here.

To summarise the results, label removal for standard stickers and paper attached with glue or milk is no problem at all. As for appearance, paper seems to be the way to go.
Oh, and milk doesn't smell as people correctly stated.

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Fermenting: Linthwaite Light
Bottled: Munton's IPA
Next in Line: Possibly a Stout - any suggestions?

Check out my latest progress on my blog: http://bellsbeer.wordpress.com

Chaos_Being

Recipes 

I just got a bunch of used bottles that needed to be de-labeled. On the suggestion of many people here, I tried soaking them in some water and Oxiclean...I have to say, that stuff rocks! It completely dissolved the glue holding the labels on in less than an hour; all I had to do was rinse the bottles and they looked brand new.

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L337 Brewing Co.-Pwn your sobriety
Primary:Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookie Holiday Ale, Caramel Apple Cider v.4
Secondary: None
Bottled: Hrothgar Hefe, OktoberFast Ale, Irish Stout, Dopplebock, Schwarzbier
Bottled/Aging: Oaked Concord Wine, Sweet Mead, Raspberry Melomel
Up Next: American Amber, Goblin Rocket Fuel 2.0, Red Rye Ale, Imperial Stout, etc...

BillyA

Recipes 

Good to hear. I just got well over 200 bottles. I'm gonna need a 50 gallon drum and some oxiclean.

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[FONT="Impact"]
Primary: Empty
Secondary: Empty
Bottled: IPA, Robust Porter, Cherry Ale
Kegged: McDonald's Dry Irish Stout
On Deck: First All Grain

Homercidal

Recipes 

I soaked my bottles in hot tap water for 1/2 to 1 hour, and all of the Bass Pale Ale bottles came right off. Some of the other odds and ends bottles required a peel-and-soak after the first soak, and then some scrubbing. I'll try that oxyclean for comparison. Cleaning bottles and removing labels is easily my least favorite part of brewing.

sanders5x

Recipes 

And for the stubborn labels, after a good soak: a 1" putty knife!

AFAJ Brew Guy

Recipes 

Speaking of label removal, how hard is it to get the labels off of the aluminum bud cans? I may be able to get a lot of them empty and I was just sort of wondering about this.

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Harvest Creek Brewing Company

"There seems to be an over abundance of beer related items in this house." -SWMBO

For current brews see my profile.

beergorila

Recipes 

A trick I've heard, but not yet tried, is running a wire wheel on a drill over the labels.

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::QUAIL BREWING COMPANY::
Primary: British IPA
Secondary: ----
On Tap: Oatmeal Stoutlaw, 80 Shill
Up Next: IIPA

ohiobrewtus

Recipes 

Another vote for OxiClean. It takes just about anything off after a 30 min soak.

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xcrusader

Recipes 

Hey! Where do you guys get your bottles??? I cant drink as much as I need to bottle in the amount of time I have.
Thanks,
CRU

BigKahuna

Recipes 

Anyone ever figured out what wil get the paint off of bottles? I would LOVE to do a CARIBBEAN Light ale and bottle in a Red Stripe bottle. SWIMBO likes the stumpy little bottles, and I think they are cool...but you can't even get the paint off with a wire wheel on a bench grinder.

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