Best Label Removing Method Ever? I think so.

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chopsbrewery

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This works wonders for removing labels without ever scrubbing bottles! Thank you science for improving life once again. Removes labels like a champ, and gets rid of mold too.

You will need:

- 1 cooler that you don't use for anything else. Think Goodwill or search your garage/shed for whatever size plastic cooler you can find.
- 1 bottle Ammonia.
- Dish Soap (dial and 7th generation work best) [NO BLEACH PRODUCTS]
- Rubber kitchen gloves (the kind with the textured palm)
- mask and goggles (i think i have to list these, but i don't use them)
- Time

What you do:

Don the gloves for every single thing you do in this process. Goggles and a mask are advisable if you are the accident prone type. Ammonia reeks. I use the lemon-scented variety, but it still smells like ammonia and lemons.

Dump the ammonia into the now-single-purpose cooler. Fill the now empty ammonia container 4 times with water (that's a good ratio) and add it to the cooler.

Add some liquid dish soap. Eyeball this based on the cooler size. Add the amount you would use to soak dirty pans in that cooler.

Stir. You now have what science calls "sudsy ammonia" for about 1/5th of the price that you can buy a pre-made bottle of it for.

Fill your cooler with bottles, submerging them entirely. As many as can go, as long as your label is submerged.

Let is sit for an afternoon. Don the gloves again. Keep your head away from the cooler as you open it and remove bottles. This stuff stinks, but the stink doesn't stick to the bottle. Attempt to wipe the label off. Some brands - Magic Hat, Sierra Nevada, New Belgium - come off with such ease you will be amazed. The glue residue wipes off with another pass or two of the textured palm. Some brands - Real Ale, most european brews - may take a day or two, or sometimes even a week or two. Some won't come off at all (certain overpriced german brews come to mind here), so drop them in your city recycling bin.

From what I can tell you have about a month before the soap and ammonia start to denature in the cooler and lose their effect. But at $1.12 for a bottle of ammonia and what amounts to $0.08 of soap, you will save money within the first 2 weeks. I have now done this with 3 cases worth of bottles from 6 different brands and I have had been extremely pleased. Not even a hint of label glue is left and some very old mold has been cleaned out.

Rinse the bottles well, dry them, and they are ready to store indefinitely in a dry place. Then post a comment thanking me for this awesome tip. ;-)

***Please keep in mind that even though ammonia is sold at your local grocer, it is not exactly the safest thing in the world. Always wear the gloves. NEVER let it come in contact with bleach, or even the faintest amount of bleach residue. If that bottle has the fancy foil crap on the neck, recycle that bad boy. Nothing reactive needs to go into this mix. I'm not trying to scare you, so think of this like the warning on StarSan - it's there cause someone hurt themselves once. But they were probably doing something stupid.***
 
I'm glad that works for you but I disagree. The only thing I've ever needed was one step and hot water. The labels fall off.
 
Hot Water and "pulse oxy strong stain remover" from family dollar Around 5$ for 3.5lb. one scoop in a 5 gallon pail. Most Labels fall off soon with a little scrubbing to remove the glue and a warm water rinse. thats what i do, its fast and easy. One tub lasted me for at least 8 brews and i also use it to clean all of my equipment before and after fermenting, and the used bottles also. I sanitize with star san that i also use a 5 gallon pail for. Wine bottles are a little more work but i just use a razor scraper first on the paper.:mug:
 
water and a couple small scoops of oxy and 95% come off in a day. No nasty chemicals, no skin burns. While I am sure amonina and other chemicals work fine... why use something that requires that kind of protection? Unecessary.
 
I don't know. Everytime I do it with one step, the labels fall off in minutes.
 
I use primarily the shorter Sierra style bottle and have never had a problem removing labels by filling the bottle with super hot water and then soaking in a sink of hot tap water. Let them soak for about 15 minutes and the labels just pretty much come off. Maybe a little green scrubbing of some glue but that's it.
 
I remove labels with hot water and dish soap . A couple minutes in that and they just fall off and I remove the remaining glue with scotch brite . Vinyl labels ? hmmm . Hit em with denatured alcohol or acetone . that will teach em a lesson .
 
+1 for oxyclean and water heater hot water. I let my kitchen faucet run for 5 min at hot then fill up the sink with one scoop of oxy. Add bottles let sit for an hour and they all fall off. Plus you just did your wife a favor by cleaning the sink!
 
I boil my bottles for just a few minutes with a tablespoon of lye. When I pull them out of the water there isn't a label and any remaining glue just wipes off! The lye is cheap and I boil them on the wood stove in the shop whenever I'm out there! Some people are afraid of the lye, but it's the main ingredient in soap and I've never had an issue. I Use it alot!
 
I have been bringing a couple gallons of water to a boil or close to boiling and add some oxyclean free and dump that into a cooler with the bottles in them. Seal it up for like two hours. Labels even difficult ones just float off.
 
It's the scrubbing part I don't like. And this saves me money over one step, b brite, and oxyclean. When I use oxyclean or baking soda my bottles get a nasty film on them that takes several washes to get rid of. Could be something in the local water though.

The gloves are to protect your hands from stinking of ammonia. When I've used boiling water I spend more time scrubbing the adhesive and paper residue off the boil pot afterwards then I'm willing to spend.

I think this works for me because it fits my lifestyle. I take a case of used labelled bottles from the garage, dump them in the cooler with the mix, then a day or two later rinse them out in the sink. The labels stay floating in the cooler. Total working time is 10 minutes spread out over how ever many days I let them sit in the cooler. It takes longer than that to boil a pot of water (in winter at least).

As for the safety, read the back of your oxyclean (or laundry detergent for that matter) and it will tell you the same thing. Do we need those warnings? Well...someone out there obviously did or it wouldn't be there. I pass those on out of an irrational fear of litigation.

And I've always been taught that lye is basically a poison. That may be a generational thing though. Plus I can't remember the last time I saw a soap made with lye.

So maybe my post was a little to excited. But if you want a very low hassle, very low labor way to do this, it might be worth giving this a try. Thanks for the feedback everyone.
 
When I use oxyclean or baking soda my bottles get a nasty film on them that takes several washes to get rid of. Could be something in the local water though.

If you have hard water, oxyclean will cause some light mineral deposits to form if you soak for very long. A quick rinse with anything mildly acidic will take it right off. Star-san for example works well.
 
Frankly i think you all are all wet. you dont need water and you dont need soap and you dont need chemicals. what you need is a bench grinder with a wire brush, a steel wire brush doesnt hurt the bottle and and it saves on the mess. not to mention what happens in the garage my wife has no say in. I do however recomend a good pair of safety goggles and a pair of good leather gloves.
 
(Plastic vessel of a reasonable size + warm water + oxyclean) + 48 hours = Bottles without labels.
 
Frankly i think you all are all wet. you dont need water and you dont need soap and you dont need chemicals. what you need is a bench grinder with a wire brush, a steel wire brush doesnt hurt the bottle and and it saves on the mess. not to mention what happens in the garage my wife has no say in. I do however recomend a good pair of safety goggles and a pair of good leather gloves.

you still must clean up all that glue covered paper flying all over like spit balls and clean up your wire brush and hope you do not loose that grip on the bottle .
Or you can just not put them bothersome labels on your bottles . I do not . I only have to clean the labels off of liquor store bottles I use sometimes . No point in throwing them away since bottles cost me 19.00 a case plus tax
 
I've never had any trouble just using a hot sinkful of water and dish soap, soak for 5-15 min, then scrub with a dobie. There are a limited few brands that I have trouble with, like Grand Teton's cellar reserve labels, which are made from what I call "Satan Foil".
 
I've never had any trouble just using a hot sinkful of water and dish soap, soak for 5-15 min, then scrub with a dobie. There are a limited few brands that I have trouble with, like Grand Teton's cellar reserve labels, which are made from what I call "Satan Foil".

Them foil labels are probably glued on with a rubber cement type glue instead of the water soluble type for paper . you might try using a hair dryer to heat up the label and soften the glue.
have you tried calling in a priest to do an exorcism on that devil foil ?
 
All of this is far too much work. I simply built myself a kiln and melt my old bottles. The labels simply burn up! No chemicals or scrubbing at all! Then I blow new bottles, simple as that.

Seriously, though. Oxyxlean or PBW in some water. Is it really worth risking knocking yourself out or poisoning yourself with a homemade ammonia solution to save 10 cents?
 
if the bottles are dry, the glue is too, it sweeps up and very little sticks to the wire brush, however, since it is in my garage i don't have to scour the whole place. and since the glue is dry it comes off as a powder, no spitballs. and even if i did drop a bottle, it sweeps off a concrete floor pretty well too. you have to wash bottles once anyway. i don't see the point in doing it 20 times for each brew.
 
We were just talking about this in another thread recently, so I thought I'd share another easy method:

A few months ago I read about someone putting them in a hot oven. I decided to try it by heating the oven to 350 and throwing the bottles in for 5-7 minutes. While they are still hot, remove the label.It works great and with little effort. I think the plastic labels are the easiest to remove. Anything sticky that remains can easily be cleaned off after they cool.
 
Why do we want to hurt ourselves? Hot bottles, mixing chemicals. Time is the greatest warrior against labels. Soaking them in water with a simple solution of soap is too simple. No pain, clean bottles gained.
 
coosabrew said:
PBW and water + overnite sit, and done.

This. The label falls off, hit the bottle with a wash rag or scrubbie pad. If the label doesn't come right off after an overnight soak the bottle is rejected and goes in the recycle bin. Plastic and foil labels just aren't worth my time. If I'm really in need of bottles a case of empties is $12. But when I buy beer I usually go for something with pry off caps, Bells and Sam Adams are good, and the labels are easy. I have 12-13 cases of longnecks, that seems like enough for now, and I'm working on a kegging goal. :)
 
Any other home brewers out there that simply leave labels on??
Let me tell ya'-- that's convenience.
 
if the bottles are dry, the glue is too, it sweeps up and very little sticks to the wire brush, however, since it is in my garage i don't have to scour the whole place. and since the glue is dry it comes off as a powder, no spitballs. and even if i did drop a bottle, it sweeps off a concrete floor pretty well too. you have to wash bottles once anyway. i don't see the point in doing it 20 times for each brew.

I thought perhaps the glue would melt a bit from heat generated by the brush action.
I simply use hot tap water . I am washing the bottle anyway and the label falls right off and the glue left on the bottle comes right of with a light wiping with the scotch bright pad. Although I am sure different bottles would be harder due to different types of glues. I am usually cleaning a Honey Brown lager bottle .
( I know , screw off , but they cap just fine with a hand capper but not the bench capper)
 

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