I'll never understand why....

People will go to the trouble of brewing their own beer but are too lazy to remove the labels from the bottles. Discuss.

I don't purposefully remove them but I've never had a label stay on through washing and sanitising.

While it does suck I remove mine and don't have to hard a time.

I've got a large wash bin sink in my basement workshop, for those without, use your bathtub.
I let at least 15+ bottle soak for a day or two.
Turn on some tunes.
Use a metal paint scraper that's 3 inches wide which removes the labels with ease.
Then go back with a green scrub pad and remove the remaining glue.
Rinse bottles again and I'm done.
Bottles get a good sanitizing before they get filled.

I prefer shorter bottles, New Castle are my favorite as you can see whats in them. Not to say i don't have brown short and long necks.

Soak em in some oxiclean for a couple hours and they slide right off.

You don't make a pizza, including the crust, from scratch and then serve it out of a 2 week old Dominos pizza box that is saturated with rancid grease or bake a cake from scratch and serve it out of a used cellophane-top box from the grocery store bakery. Why would you do the equivalent for your beer?

Sometimes I leave them on to write dates/beer types over the label with a big sharpie but as of recently I've been removing the labels... and Ive been sleeping better at night so that's probably how its going to be from now on

Because some people aren't as concerned with outward appearances. Especially when it comes to something only they will be enjoying. If the labels had any kind of effect on the beer inside it might be different. But they don't, so it doesn't matter as much. As with so many other things in this hobby, this is something that can really be left up to personal preference.

Oxyclean, home brew, tunes and a big scrub brush! I try to pick specific brands that must use different glues so they come off easier. For 12 oz bottles, Saranac and Southern Tier seem to be the easiest in my area. DFH appears that it would be easy, but I struggled with the last ones I de-labeled.

For the most part I also try to re-use empties. If that doesn't work, I've tried the Tom Sawyer approach by bribing my friends to help. You usually only get them to do it once though...

B Brite from Midwest is the bomb, soak them for 30 minutes and they fall off, no need for peeling........

Mb2658 said:

You don't make a pizza, including the crust, from scratch and then serve it out of a 2 week old Dominos pizza box that is saturated with rancid grease or bake a cake from scratch and serve it out of a used cellophane-top box from the grocery store bakery. Why would you do the equivalent for your beer?

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Completely different. The bottle itself is the pizza box/ cake container. That gets cleaned.
What's stuck to the outside of it has no taint of "rancid grease". Lighten up perhaps.

mcspanner said:

Completely different. The bottle itself is the pizza box/ cake container. That gets cleaned.
What's stuck to the outside of it has no taint of "rancid grease". Lighten up perhaps.

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Hey, if you want to be the kid at school with stains all over his clothes, be my guest.

Guilty. I keg my beer and fill up bottles from the tap if I want to bring my brew somewhere or give them away. It doesn't affect anything, so why worry about it? The inside is clean/sanitized. I've got better things to do than scrape bottles. If I bottled entire batches and re-used the bottles then I'd probably go thru the trouble, but I just take them somewhere to drink and they get left behind.

You could take it another step and say 'I'll never understand why people drink their beers from plain brown bottles'. If you go thru the trouble to brew it why not create your own labels...

I used to be very specific about my bottles and had to have them perfectly clean and free of it's former contents, including the labels. Yes it takes a long time, and it's not as fun as making the beer.

Since moving to kegs, I haven't been that concerned with labels when I do have to bottle a batch, call it basic laziness. I usually don't have complaints from people when I pass out free homebrew in a bottle with remnants of a label on the outside. And it hasn't changed the taste of the beer any.

It's a waste of time and effort. I label the bottle cap so I know what it is and I always pour my beer in a pint glass anyway. IMO it makes no difference in the end so why even bother with the label. It's just more time I could spend doing something else.

Mb2658 said:

Hey, if you want to be the kid at school with stains all over his clothes, be my guest.

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Again, bad analogy, stains are the result of poor hygiene, sloppy eating. Labels that stay on after sanitisation are only indicative of having better things to do with your time than scrape a bottle.

Mb2658 said:

Hey, if you want to be the kid at school with stains all over his clothes, be my guest.

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Chill poindexter. We get it, you hate old labels.

Mb2658 said:

You don't make a pizza, including the crust, from scratch and then serve it out of a 2 week old Dominos pizza box that is saturated with rancid grease or bake a cake from scratch and serve it out of a used cellophane-top box from the grocery store bakery. Why would you do the equivalent for your beer?

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Your analogy doesn't hold water. The beer bottle is simply the carbonation vehicle. I bet most on here, unless in a pinch serve their home brew out of a beer glass, not the bottle.

When I make pizza from scratch I use the same oven I've had in my house for 5 years and the pizza stone my grandmother used in her oven in 1940. Do I serve it out of the oven or on the stone, of course not. I place on nice plates or a serving platter and garnish. Much like with my beer, when someone comes to enjoy one of my home brews I pop the lid pour into a glass and give to them and set the bottle aside for re-use. Although, most of the labels don't make it through cleaning/sanitization.

this is exactly why I don't drink people's beer when it still has labels on it. I saw one guy serving his beers at a local bar that has a homebrew happy hour. He had Samuel Smith Bottles with the labels on. Samuel Smith labels fall of in 2 minutes in lukewarm water. He had brought his first 4 batches of beer. It was obvious to me that the bottles hadn't been sanitized. Gross.

RmikeVT said:

I bet most on here, unless in a pinch serve their home brew out of a beer glass, not the bottle.

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That's basically me. If I'm giving the bottles away and want to create an entire image, I'll do up the labels, wrap them and put a bow on. If you're at my house, I'm going to pour them out of a tap. I haven't polished the kegs (looks like a lot of work--and I'd rather brew), but they're inside the fridge and won't be seen. Likewise when I bottle stuff (like a barley wine that I'm going to age) I'll bottle in anything that is clean inside. I'm going to present the beer in a nice glass--not in a bottle.

dietz31684 said:

Chill poindexter. We get it, you hate old labels.

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I've pulled the labels off because at some point I want to put my own on. Otherwise, I wouldn't care. Old scruffy labels don't migrate through the glass and detract from the taste of the beer, do they? And drinking a beer is about 10-15 minutes out of my life (OK, sometimes 2 minutes). Forget the label, Mabel.

There, I discussed it. I feel much better now.

Labels come off naturally when I soak used bottles for the first time. It's easy and besides, if I was new to homebrew and skeptical, I wouldn't want to try someone homemade beer out of a fat tire bottle. It just doesn't instill confidence. That being said, it doesn't affect the beer if all other sanitation practices are followed so to each their own.

I have never used a bottle with the original label on it. I'd rather have a perfectly clean bottle for myself, and for SURE would never want to give out bottles with some old label on them.

Cleaning them off is a little bit of work. It's not the work that is troublesome to me, it's the time. My usual process is to soak them for a couple of hours or overnight in a large kitchen trash can full of oxiclean.

Then something comes up to interfere with the cleaning and they sit there for a few days or more until get the time and right attitude to get back to them. By then the water is cold and they don't come off as clean. I might have to reheat or make more hot solution.

The actual de-labeling is not a big deal. Some brands I just return or toss out, depending on how hard they are to return. I just skip the brands I know are horrible to remove the labels from (I'M LOOKING AT YOU SHORTS!)

The bonus comes when I can convince someone else to rinse them and hang them on the bottle tree.

I bottle all of my batches and do de-label every bottle. Its a pain, but I tend to do it as I go, about 6-7 bottles at a time. I like the way it looks, its cleaner, and I feel gives a better impression when I give them away. Im also labeling the ones I give away too though. Regardless, I write the beer name on the caps so I know what everything is. Personal preference; as long as the beer inside is good, who cares?

For the same reason that people will buy an nice car, spend the time to service and maintain the engine but neglect to wash and wax it. Some people are too lazy to worry about aesthetics.

I like to leave the labels on so it will repulse picky people and they will not drink my beer.

Take some pride in your craft. How lazy do you have to be for it to be too much of a burden to soak bottles in oxiclean? No scraping involved. No interaction involved until you rinse, which you do anyway when you clean your bottles.

You do actually clean your bottles, right?

I use it as therapy when I want to be involved but have the fermenter busy and in wait mode. I have built up enought bottles that I don't have to remove to many bottles. For me oxyclrean and hot eater does trick. Oh reminds me need to soak some bottles in bucket I'll need for tonight.brew session.

danielbt said:

Take some pride in your craft. How lazy do you have to be for it to be too much of a burden to soak bottles in oxiclean? No scraping involved. No interaction involved until you rinse, which you do anyway when you clean your bottles.

You do actually clean your bottles, right?

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I take pride in what goes into the bottels, not the bottels themselves. You could call it lazyness, I call it apathy.

I keg most everything but if I want to bottle a few I run them through the dishwasher, and could care less if the labels come off or not.

Jayhem said:

For the same reason that people will buy an nice car, spend the time to service and maintain the engine but neglect to wash and wax it. Some people are too lazy to worry about aesthetics.

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Because with beer, like with cars, it's what's under the hood that matters. That, and I guess SA and SN use some sort of super industrial glue with their labels because because I soak all of my bottles in a warm 1:10 bleach solution before bottling and the labels have never seemed like they were ready to come off easily.

I like to bottle 1/2 batches using "recycled" bottles with old labels on them and the other 1/2 bottles i've bought new. This way I have bottles to give away to people and don't have to ask for them back, and bottles for when people come over to share that look nice. Best of both worlds.

Mb2658 said:

Hey, if you want to be the kid at school with stains all over his clothes, be my guest.

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To quote George Thorogood "I drink alone".

if you're drinking at home, who cares if you've got stains on your clothes, labels on your bottles, or peanut shells on the floor. It's all about the beer.

Herky21 said:

this is exactly why I don't drink people's beer when it still has labels on it. I saw one guy serving his beers at a local bar that has a homebrew happy hour. He had Samuel Smith Bottles with the labels on. Samuel Smith labels fall of in 2 minutes in lukewarm water. He had brought his first 4 batches of beer. It was obvious to me that the bottles hadn't been sanitized. Gross.

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Jet washer and vinator. Just saying.

johngaltsmotor said:

To quote George Thorogood "I drink alone".

if you're drinking at home, who cares if you've got stains on your clothes, labels on your bottles, or peanut shells on the floor. It's all about the beer.

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True, and if no one sees it, no one will be the wiser. But then again, if you post pictures of your labeled bottles, stained clothes and peanut shell covered floor on the Internet, like some do, you intend for others to see.

For me, it's worth the small amount effort to clean up the bottles. For some it isn't. Fair enough. It doesn't make your beer any better or worse provided that you follow adequate sanitation methods. I would say that it does impact the overall image of the finished package/product. I think that it is fair to say that an outsider trying your beer who sees you pour it from a bottle with a janky faded 1554 label is going to have a different impression of your beer than if it comes out of a bottle that is clean or has a custom made label.

For me personally, it is a pride issue. I don't want someone else's tired old label on the fruits of my labor.

Just sandblast the bottles. Its quick, easy, and everyone has a sandblaster anyway

I will usually put my brew in 22oz bottles and a lot of those are silkscreened (Rogue, Stone, Hopworks) so the label isn't coming off. A little sharpie on the cap so I know what is inside is all I need.

The beer inside is great. The outside of the clean and sanitized bottle doesn't mean much so I'll spend my time on more important things.

Wow. I'm surprised none of you have died from label contamination. Everybody knows that beer labels go bad after their first use. You people must like living on the edge. I'm not even convinced the bottles even last more than a couple uses. If I could, I'd just drink straight from the fermenter and carbonate each gulp in my mouth.

We eat and drink with our eyes, so I would be leery of a bottle with some random label still attached, but really I wouldn't mind too much once I poured it into a pint glass. I mean really I would just prefer it on kegged anyway.