Advice on the best way to remove labels needed!

I am brand new to the home brewing scene and have my first ever batch in the primary (American IPA). I have been saving my craft brew bottles for some time. What is the best solution to soak the bottles in to loosen the glue to remove labels. Most of my bottles are from Bell's and from what I hear, the labels are tough to get off. I still have a couple of weeks before bottling, but want to start preping bottles. Thanks in advance for your advice!

oxyclean soak FTW

Go to walmart or wherever and get you some oxyclean FREE, which is the unscented version. One spoon full of that in water will make the labels fall off on their own in about 2 hours time. Its also great for cleaning gunky fermenters. Be sure not to get the scented oxyclean though.

I am a big fan of a solid scoop of oxyclean and water in some sort of tub/bucket and let them soak overnight. This is also good for cleaning the inside of the bottles if you didnt thoroughly rinse them out after use

Also, check the Label Removal Thread Sticky at the top of this forum. I found a TON of great advice in there.

++++++oxyclean and let them soak overnight, run them through sanitize cycle in the dishwasher, heat dry and bottle.....done.

v

I've never tried oxyclean, but I've had success soaking them in very hot water with some TSP. The labels peel off. Then I use a scrubby to take the glue off.

Any bottles whose labels won't come off with Oxyclean, toss 'em in the recycling because that's by far the easiest solution and if that don't work, there ain't much that will. There's a few bottles where pretty much nothing will remove the label, which to me sounds like a good excuse to just go buy another six pack.

All of the above advice, and I would like to note that Guinness Draught, with the plastic labels, are some of the easiest labels to remove. I pull the widget out with needlenose pliers and slit the plastic label with a small, sharp knife top to bottom and it just about jumps off the bottle!

And they have a sexay shape too!

This might sound crazy but...

I do the hot water/oxyclean soak which floats off 75% of the labels I encounter. But for that other stubborn 25%, I use 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper under water. Doesn't scratch the glass and shreds everything else.

There's nothing that the application of fire cannot solve.

Oxyclean and SOS pads, whatever glue is still on the bottle comes off like a dream, i don't clean bottles without a box of SOS pads handy.

brewser09 said:

Oxyclean and SOS pads, whatever glue is still on the bottle comes off like a dream, i don't clean bottles without a box of SOS pads handy.

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+1 to SOS pads, they made life easier. I used to use a simple green soak, after an hour or two most labels slid right off. Had to do some serious rinsing though.

I have a 5gal bucket full of TSP/bleach solution (TSP = trisodium phosphate, avail at hardware store). I put about 2 cups of TSP and 1 cup of bleach. I've been using the same bucket for 6 months. I've probably put 8 cases of bottles in there. The solution starts to get a little mucky, but it doesn't seem to matter. The lables FALL off after 48 hours in the bath. Any mold in the bottles will fall out as well. I triple rinse each one, and sometimes I have to wipe stubborn glue off with a sponge. After the rinse, it's a hot DW wash without soap on bottle day.

TSP is supposedly toxic. Bleach is toxic too, so I figure they are about the same. I stick my arms in there and just wash up when I'm done... no irritation or anything.

Having seen where other people use oxyclean, maybe that would be a better (less caustic) option. The TSP/bleach bath works really well, so I'm hesitant to change. I might give oxyclean a try once my TSP bath is totally shot.

+1 to OxyClean (though I use "Sun Oxygen Cleaner" from Walmart). I mix 1-2 scoops in a dishpan of hot water and soak about 15-20 bottles at a time.

Thanks everyone! OK, so here's what I did. I have 2 batches that need bottling (one this weekend and one next weekend). I have accumulated well over 100 bottles with the help of all of my buddies. I took a 32 gallon sterite container and filled bottles with hot water and placed them upright until the entire bottom was full of bottles. I then took a big scoop of OxyClean and sprinkled over them. I filled the sterite with hot water, put in another scoop of OxyClean and then sunk the remaining bottles into the solution on top of the others. All 100 easily fit in and within 30 minutes, labels were floating on the top. I left them in the tub for 24 hours and with the exception of 2 bottles, not only did the labels fall off, but there were all free of any label glue residue. I only had to scrub 2 bottles out of 100! As I removed each bottle from the solution, I quickly used the bottle brush to ensure that they were free of any residue on the inside, rinsed under hot water and placed them upside down in boxes with a towel in the bottom for draining/drying.

On bottling days, I plan on doing a 10 minute Iodophor soak for sanitization. I plan on filling a spray bottle with the Iodophor solution and spraying down the racks of my dishwasher several times and then placing them upside down over the tines of the racks to drain the solution before filling. Any other suggestions from anyone? Since the OxyClean did such a great job, does anyone think that I should run them through a cycle in the dishwasher before sanitizing in Iodophor?

This is my first bottling experience, so any other tips are greatly appreciated. Thanks all!

Those bottle trees with the vinator bottle washer make it a lot quicker and easier if you're going to use sanitizer.

I've had people say, "Just use water; ever seen a cooler with budlight in it? Man those lables just fall right off!"

Well, that's true, but it's not the label that's the problem. It's the adhesive that stays on the bottle.

I use a scoop of oxiclean free; arrange my bottles in my 10 gallon brew pot, fill it up with hot water and let it sit for a day. Oxiclean completley removes the glue and the labels. From there it's just a quick wash at the faucet and a spray of starsan and you're good to go!

a 24hr soak in Oxyclean left a gritty scale all over my bottles (inside too) and it didn't remove all the glue. An overnight soak in Saniclean took off the scale and 99% of the glue. What was left wiped off easily. No more Oxyclean for me. Hot water soak followed by Saniclean will be it.

I have possibly the hardest tapwater in the world. The harder your tapwater is the more careful you have to be with oxyclean. If you let it dry then you have to soak them in vinegar and water to get the scale off...you can't scrub the stuff off even with scothbrite. Moral of the story: don't let your Oxyclean soak dry on the bottles. If you do...vinegar is pretty cheap so its not the end of the world. Oxyclean is still the best I've found for removing labels.

Yeah my water is extremely hard so that's probably the issue.