My Tips to Preparing Commercial Brewery Bottles for Homebrew

Hey All, I'm only on my third batch as of now but i have learned a great deal about removing beer bottle labels. I thought i would share and see if anyone else has any additions to put in.

Removing paper labels from Bottles:
Fill up a sink, or tub with a decent amount of hot water. Add the appropriate amount of Oxy-Clean powder [1/2-1 cup per gallon]. Put as many bottles as you can fit in the sink/tub (make sure they're underwater) and just let them soak. In 20 minutes, the labels will literally be falling off of the bottles. Use a brillo pad, or SOS over the surface of the bottle to wipe off residual glue and paper. I've tried this trick with Budweiser, Sam Adams, and a half dozen other commercial beers.

Removing Clear Plastic Labels from Bottles:
When i was approaching bottling day with my first batch, i really only had one type of beer bottle in the house with a crown top. That's Amstel Light. It had the annoying clear plastic labels with some sort of crazy adhesive behind them. I tried the Oxy-Clean trick with these, but it's useless. The plastic creates a barrier so the solution can't get to the glue. First, you need something metal that can get under the label such as a knife or razor blade. Boil a pot of water and dip the bottle in for about two minutes. The bottle will be really hot, so i use cooking tongs. Use the razor to peel the corner of the label. Once you have enough to get a firm grip just peel off the label with your fingers. When the labels are all off, dip the bottle in the oxy-clean solution (see above) and use SOS to remove the adhesive. WIthout adding the oxy-clean, that adhesive is brutal.

Using these two methods (as i did 10 minutes ago) you can get any commercial beer bottle with a crown-top up to homebrew standards. Some beer bottles (sam adams) have a logo engraved in the bottle itself. This is just something we have to live with. I seriously recommend any crown top bottle with a paper label. They're a breeze.

I'm going to do a seperate post on printing and labeling a 'blank' beer bottle.

Thats pretty much what I do. The first time I used my tub was also the last because I had tons of label residue to clean up. Now I just use my big ice chest that way I can just drain it and hose it out.

nobody else just use soapy water? works fine with all the bottles iv tried

I don't know much about screenprinting in general, but is there ANY way to remove screenprint from glass bottles so you can reuse them? paint thinner? anything? I don't even know what screenprint is honestly... I've searched yahoo and the forum for how to remove screenprint and nothing...

Or am I stuck using these arrogant bastard bottles I have for internal/personal use and buying 22oz. for gifts, etc. ? I guess its not that bad since the bottles rock, but it would be cool if there was a way to remove it too.

Them Sam Adams bottles are a PITA... worst I've encountered. The Magic Hats I had fell off after a short soak.

Have yet to try the oxyclean though... I've heard good things about it.

Steigel labels come off like panties on prom night, but Great Lakes Brewing company's really like to hang on for a long time.

I've noticed that most foreign beer labels will just fall off after a short soak, even without oxyclean. Stoudt's bottles are by far the biggest PITA, as you really have to scrub with a brillo pad to get all of the glue off. I hate de-labeling.

I thought you couldn't reuse regular beer bottles for homebrewing because they would explode or something like that. Was I wrong or is there a way to discover which bottles are OK to use? I've been using the grolsch type bottles, but I'd like to switch to normal bottles and your way would be a cheap way to do it.

SilkkyBrew said:

I don't know much about screenprinting in general, but is there ANY way to remove screenprint from glass bottles so you can reuse them? paint thinner? anything? I don't even know what screenprint is honestly... I've searched yahoo and the forum for how to remove screenprint and nothing...

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I know a bit about screenprinting...

That ink is going to be a solvent based (oil / rubber based) ink, which is heat cured to the bottle.

You should be able to remove it with acetone or lacquer thinner. Simple paint thinner won't be enough.

You can probably buy a quart of the stuff at any hardware store - it ought to be enough to clean your bottles.

HOWEVER - these are toxic chemicals, and if it were my call, I wouldn't want them anywhere near comsumables. Now, between the 2, acetone dries much faster and is theoretically less harmful (it will feel cold like rubbing alcohol does when you get it on your hands - even through gloves due to the high evaporation rate). The disadvantage of this is that you end up using more to counteract how quickly it dries.

If it were me, I'd cap the bottles filled with water, to keep fumes and residues from getting inside your bottles. Buy some heavy, solvent proof gloves (not just disposable latex - HEAVY ones - thicker than dish washing gloves if you can find them). I'd tell you to wear a mask but this stuff goes through anything, so unless you have a respirator that blocks solvents, you might as well wear nothing.

In open air, with a breeze if possible, use an old towel torn into pieces to saturate the bottle fronts. It should immediately bleed and run. You'll want probably 3 rags with solvent, each cleaning more and more, and a fourth to wipe them clean with. Try not to pour solvent into grass, onto pavement, or anywhere that will lead into your water table or sewer run off. Don't be sloppy with this, and don't soak them in a bath of solvent. You'll probably eat through the rubber on the crown caps and lose your seal.

After they're clean and shiny again, let them air dry in the sun to allow as much solvent to evaporate. If you leave them for an hour and come back and smell them you should be able to tell if it's evaporated or not.

Finally, soak them in HOT soapy water, the kind of soap that removes grease and oil from dishes. You want nothing to do with acetone by the time your beer meets the bottles. Rinsing twice would be better. Three, better still.

That should hopefully work.

Want to do a quick test to see if this will work at all? Dip a q-tip into your wife or girlfriend's nail polish remover and swab your bottle. If it comes off with color on the cotton swab, you're in luck.

Also, want to see how screenprinting works? Youtube has the answers. This video shows making a screen and printing a shirt. There are rigs for bottles, mugs and glasses, as well as hats, shirts, and just about anything you can imagine.
[ame]http://youtube.com/watch?v=umALRAZlOCA[/ame]

Questions?

kvh

oxyclean FREE is the way to go!! in the mean time RDWAHA(F)HB!

Didn't know about the oxyclean trick. Glad I read this thread, because I just soak in hot water overnight and then scrub really hard the next day. knowing the oxyclean trick will save me alot of work in the future.

I use stainless steel "scrub buds" which are meant for cleaning stoves and stainless-steel appliances. They're like a cross between steel wool and chain mail. The advantages are: the never rust or fall apart, they keep working for hundreds of bottles, they will cut through any lable and its adhesive, no matter how stubborn (except for the plastic Amstel ones), and they don't need any chemicals, like OxyClean, that could linger on your bottles or wind up killing fish in the river downstream.

How do you get the stubborn foil off imports like Negra Modelo, Modelo Especial, or Franziskaner Hefe-weisse???? Any pointers? I have a bunch of these foil ones and they seem to be a PITA!

My favorite bottles are Redhook. The labels fall right off. The only problem is that they are shaped a bit different than other bottles so you can't use a normal label on them.

I'd like to know how to get off Redstone Meadery labels. I've soaked them for WEEKS, and they look brand new.

On another subject, stuff like the Arrogant Bastard bottles, they are baked-on enamel. You aren't dissolving them. Enamel, (not the house paint) is glass particles in a weak adhesive, that is melted onto the surface of the bottles. It "ain't" comin' off.

steve

Hey kvh. If u are looking for a great grease cutting dish soap try using dawn. I used to get poison ivy alot and a doctor told me to clean it with dawn cause it cuts the grease and oil really well. If u have ever had poison ivy its an itchy oily mess.

I have been using Oxyclean for hundreds of bottles now. I keep a solution in a 5 gallon pool chemical bucket with a screw-on lid outside. I can get about 15 bottles at a time in and I leave them for anywhere from a day or two to a couple of weeks depending when I get time or am in the mood to work them up.

When I work them up, I take them out and put them in a plastic tub of fresh water while I reload the bucket with a new set of bottles. I have used the same solution of Oxyclean for up to 10 batches of bottles and probably could have used it indefinately if the nastiness of how it looked didn't finally get to me.

I rinse them off and take them to my bottle washer and flush the inside with hot water and load them on my bottle tree to drain and dry. After they are dry, I cap them with a peice of aluminum foil and put them in - you may have guessed it - recycled 6 Pack containers.

Bucket, bottles and 6 pack cartons all are free at my local recycle center.

bigjon88 said:

Hey kvh. If u are looking for a great grease cutting dish soap try using dawn. I used to get poison ivy alot and a doctor told me to clean it with dawn cause it cuts the grease and oil really well. If u have ever had poison ivy its an itchy oily mess.

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Yeah, definitely that would work.

It occured to me after I posted on this topic that vinegar would work as a nice degreaser as well, and have the added bonus of being non-toxic in every way. Star-san could substitute for this too as it is mostly phosphoric acid. Also a nice option would be grain alcohol, like a $5 gallon of vodka or something.

Lots of options...

On the other side of this thread:

LouT said:

How do you get the stubborn foil off imports like Negra Modelo, Modelo Especial, or Franziskaner Hefe-weisse???? Any pointers? I have a bunch of these foil ones and they seem to be a PITA!

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mgoldey's tip for stainless steel scrub buddies, or Scotch-Brite's / Chore-Boy's copper scrub pads (same thing, different metal I think) should work great for the foil topped bottles like Modelo or Leffe. Scrub with a vinegar (a great kitchen multi-tasker) and a few drops of dish soap and it should fall right off. Wear gloves as occasionally the edges of these scrub pads can cut. I buy my copper scrub pads at a local dollar store, 4 for $1 which is muuuuuch cheaper than name brand. Homebrewers use them on the bottom of racking cane siphons to help filter out the hops too.

Also, LouT, keep in mind that the tops of modelo bottles have a different neck and flange. Caps fit them fine, but wing-cappers don't grab onto them so well (I speak from experience here). A bench capper would substitute fine in this situation however. And, on leffe bottles, if I'm not mistaken, you need the larger european sized caps (is that 29mm? - I don't recall.)


kvh

kvh said:

On the other side of this thread:

mgoldey's tip for stainless steel scrub buddies, or Scotch-Brite's / Chore-Boy's copper scrub pads (same thing, different metal I think) should work great for the foil topped bottles like Modelo or Leffe. Scrub with a vinegar (a great kitchen multi-tasker) and a few drops of dish soap and it should fall right off. Wear gloves as occasionally the edges of these scrub pads can cut. I buy my copper scrub pads at a local dollar store, 4 for $1 which is muuuuuch cheaper than name brand. Homebrewers use them on the bottom of racking cane siphons to help filter out the hops too.

Also, LouT, keep in mind that the tops of modelo bottles have a different neck and flange. Caps fit them fine, but wing-cappers don't grab onto them so well (I speak from experience here). A bench capper would substitute fine in this situation however. And, on leffe bottles, if I'm not mistaken, you need the larger european sized caps (is that 29mm? - I don't recall.)


kvh

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Good to know, I didn't know any of that. I pretty much saved the modelo bottles since clear, for use when I bottle up yeast/trub before getting around to cleaning the yeast, but maybe I'll stick with bottles I know will work with the capper I have - since I keg now I'm not going to invest in new capper or caps.

And jeez, for filtering hops when racking that sounds like a great use for those stainless scrub pads, too!

LouT said:

I pretty much saved the modelo bottles since clear, for use when I bottle up yeast/trub before getting around to cleaning the yeast, but maybe I'll stick with bottles I know will work with the capper I have - since I keg now I'm not going to invest in new capper or caps.

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Before you go tossing them out - try it. It works ok, but the taller flange on a typical 12oz longneck is ideally sized to fit the wing cappers. Capping a modello bottle without a bench-capper is possible, but be prepared to ocassionally cap one twice if the first doesn't seat properly.

kvh

Thanks, I'll try using them.