Recycling Beer Bottles -- Tricks for Glue Removal?

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AzuredEyed

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Money is tight.

I am bottling some homebrew and recycling some old beer bottles. Does anyone know any good tricks for help getting the old labels (and more specifically the glue) off?

Thanks in advance.
 
Guess I should have checked the two or three threads dedicated solely to his subject.:cross:
 
I've found that simply soaking them in water, then scrubbing with steel wool gets the job done most of the time.
 
oxyclean and steel wool works well. The only thing I will add is that the water they bottles are soaking it needs to be warm. I have a big tub in the garage (which is about 56 right now) and the process is very very slow and not as good as the summer when it only takes about 5-7 days for most labels to come off.
 
I soak them in ammonia in a throw-away cooler for about a week in the garage - its a constant rotation. Works great from me
 
Soak them in ammonia and water for at least an hour. The labels will literally fall off. No scrubbing.
 
Oxiclean and hot water. Labels fall off in under an hour. Just wipe off the excess glue while rinsing and all is well.

Sam Adams, Dogfish Head, Great Lakes all come off real easy. I try to stick with Sams from my local beer distributor. They let me pick and choose from the return pile and just pay the 5 cents return per bottle. Just gotta find the ones without the green stuff growing inside!

Make sure to rinse your own bottles as soon as you pour, that way they stay clean for the next use.
 
I just soak in hot soapy water for 10 minutes and scrape the label off with a butter knife. Quick scrub with the sponge and it's a shiny new bottle for five cents.
 
The washing soda worked great ~ as good if not a bit better than my experience with Oxiclean. The glued on paper labels fell off after an hour of soaking and the glue wiped off with a sponge. The adhesive backed labels peeled off with minimal effort after soaking overnight. I have a 3 gallon bucket that used to contain frosting that I use for label removal. I used about a gallon or so of hot water to about 1/2 cup of washing soda.
 
INWarner413 said:
I've found that simply soaking them in water, then scrubbing with steel wool gets the job done most of the time.

I use this method on Sierra Nevada & Dogfish Head bottles. Works really well!
 
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