Label Removal Experiment Results

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

drbell

Member
Joined
Jan 16, 2008
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
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.
 
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.
 
Good to hear. I just got well over 200 bottles. I'm gonna need a 50 gallon drum and some oxiclean.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Another vote for OxiClean. It takes just about anything off after a 30 min soak.
 
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
 
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.
 
xcrusader, I bought some bottles, and asked around at work - its amaizng how many bottles you can get with just 3 or 4 people saving their brown bottles ofr you instead of the bottle bank...
 
to get bottles, you can make friends with a local barback/waiter to put them aside one night ...

Another idea: Just last night I went out to eat at a random Indian restaurant, and asked the folks at the table next to us if I could have their empty 22oz Taj Mahal bottles. Between our table & their's I got SEVEN 22oz bottles outta the dinner!!

Sure, I got a weird look at 1st, but once I said "for homebrew" they had some friendly words about the concept. Whatever, I'll never see them again anyway! lol
 
Back
Top