Hot Glue bottle wax experiment

[FatDragon]

HA is this thread littered with the semi-lazy? I haven't rolled through it in a while. Gotta admit, it's kinda a strange juxtaposition of detail, care, presentation and being a lazy slob

In my case, it was cleaning five cases of nasty bar bottles all at once. I don't have a big tub to soak them, and I didn't want to be at it for six hours, so I triaged the parts of the process that weren't crucial to bottling my beer. Before waxing, I made sure all of the neck labels had been removed, but I'll deal with the remains of the bigger labels some other time; probably half a dozen at a time as I give them out/drink them. Any beer I finish that still has part of its label remaining gets a full cleaning after pouring, so once the bottles have been used and emptied once, they're good.

There's a political element, as well. Two hours cleaning bottles from the bar is acceptable to my wife. Much more than that gets me in trouble.

 

[butterpants]

No tub sucks.... though about a large rubbermaid storage container? Pretty cheap. I couldn't imagine doing labels without a long soak in pbw.

Yep I get the wifey thing...

 

[Trippel-A]

I use a big cooler with a PBW solution. I can't do multiple cases at once, but I can do pretty big batches, let them sit until the labels fall right off, then add more. It takes many days, but not many minutes of work on my part.

 

[FatDragon]

PBW is ~$2 an ounce here in China because it's all imported small-scale by homebrew shops. I can't even find good oxy-clean here: the stuff I tried had a strong detergent smell and while my Chinese is good, it's not good enough to read the ingredients on a package of Chinese Oxy-clean knock-off, so I have no idea how closely it adheres to what US brewers are using.

 

[Trippel-A]

PBW is ~$2 an ounce here in China because it's all imported small-scale by homebrew shops. I can't even find good oxy-clean here: the stuff I tried had a strong detergent smell and while my Chinese is good, it's not good enough to read the ingredients on a package of Chinese Oxy-clean knock-off, so I have no idea how closely it adheres to what US brewers are using.

Whoa! I was going to suggest Oxyclean as an alternative... I will say that if you have a way to easily wash the bottles after delabeling with normal dish detergent, e.g. a dishwasher, it doesn't really matter what is in the Oxyclean, so long as you wear gloves and don't inhale it. If you don't have an easy way to clean them after a soak, then we're not really saving labor anymore.

 

[Lgaddy44]

With the trial run behind me and the final batch bottled, I finished waxing these tonight. My little tribute, making a fantastic stout to compliment an amazing band. Sure, they'll never see it, but I'm happy with the finished product. Only thing left now is letting it age until this Christmas.

Thank you Grogtag, and thank you HBT for making all this wonderful info available to the masses.

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[butterpants]

Those look really nice!

 

[Lgaddy44]

Thanks. By the way, my trial run of 4 crayons to 8 glue sticks was not the best ratio. The wax was very difficult to peel off. This time, I went with more of a ratio as the OP suggested, using 9 crayons and 15 glue sticks. I'll update the results in a few months, when I crack one open.

 

[FatDragon]

Thanks. By the way, my trial run of 4 crayons to 8 glue sticks was not the best ratio. The wax was very difficult to peel off. This time, I went with more of a ratio as the OP suggested, using 9 crayons and 15 glue sticks. I'll update the results in a few months, when I crack one open.

Do you have any idea how much your crayons and glue sticks weigh, to give a better idea of the ratio for those of us who don't necessarily use the same glue sticks and crayons as the majority here seem to use?

 

[Lgaddy44]

Crayon is 10g, and glue stick is also 10g. I think those may be a bit different than some of the other calculations I've seen earlier in this thread. I'm not claiming my ratio to be successful yet, it's just what i went with.

 

[sj3324]

With the trial run behind me and the final batch bottled, I finished waxing these tonight. My little tribute, making a fantastic stout to compliment an amazing band. Sure, they'll never see it, but I'm happy with the finished product. Only thing left now is letting it age until this Christmas.

Thank you Grogtag, and thank you HBT for making all this wonderful info available to the masses.

Clutch :rockin:

 

[HeritageHD]

Just thought I would throw my experience in the mix. Using some of the other posts I went with a mixture that was about 30% crayon and 70% glue stick by weight. I found a standard crayon weighs about 4.7 grams and a .44" x 10" glue stick weighs 24.7 grams. I used 11g of wax per ~25g of glue for the 30% wax mixture (11/(11+25)). This is roughly 7 crayons and 3 glue sticks, or (33/(33+74.1)) = 30.8% wax mixture.

I tired 7 removal methods which consisted of no assistance (straight dip), full piece of masking tape wrapped around the neck, half piece of masking around the neck, floss taped to the cap then wrapped around and over, floss wrapped with no tape, duct tape wrapped around the neck, and duct tape going vertically across the crown. Of the tests I found the duct tape vertically across the cap to work best. I tore 1/4" strips about 4" long and placed them below the crown on the glass then over the cap and down the side of the bottle. I then folded the tape inside on itself for a pull tab.

The next time I do it I will use a deeper can with more mixture, and longer strips to be able to dip the bottles deeper.

The green topped bottles are 18 months old and I had 2 of the seals leak once they hit the hot wax.

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[conpewter]

Nice testing Heritage, looks nice (though I agree, a deeper can will work better) I found taking a can opener to a soda can worked really well and was disposable. Soup can would work too.

 

[oceanic_brew]

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Did this for an exchange I'm doing where we all picked one BrewDog recipe.

Turned out ok but I should have used a different twine/rope for it. I like the rustic look of it but it's showing through the wax in places.

The recipe I picked was "how to disappear completely" a radiohead song so I'm hoping to get a nice Stanley donwood piece on for a label.

 

[eigua]

Great thread! I love the creative repurposing of misc ordinary goods most of us have lying around the house.

I'm looking to seal some bottles for a couple of reasons:

1. I have some homebrew meads and wines that I had to use T-corks on since I don't have a corker and also because some of them are in screw-type champagne bottles (I don't have the caps). T-corks don't make a great seal so I'm concerned with oxidation over the a 2+ year storage time.

2. I have a number of nicer bottles of liquor like single malt Scotch whiskey, bourbon, and port which I'd like to keep around for a good number of years before drinking them.

My main concern here is reducing oxygen exposure and evaporation over time. I've read quite a bit about very slow leakage and evaporation through corks over long periods. Some even say that ambient smells will leech into the bottles over time and recommend you never use aerosols around your collection or store your bottles in cardboard (including the boxes whiskey may come in for example.)

While I have to say many of the pictures posted in this thread look completely awesome, I'm not really that concerned with making beautiful looking bottles (yet -- I will definitely try this at some point). Inspired by the OP's use of hot glue, I thought perhaps just ringing the T-corks with hot glue directly might have the same protecting effect. If there are any chemists out there, is there any way to tell whether hot glue is gas-permeable? Would the addition of wax increase/decrease the permeability? Or is all of this really more for aesthetics?

And one question to those that have stored bottles long-term and drank them -- have you noticed any off tastes/smells leeching in from the smell of the crayon/glue mixture? (I read it was a pretty bad smell when melting. I would be more concerned about this with corks than with caps.)

EDIT: According to Wikipedia, hot glue is at least somewhat gas permeable:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-melt_adhesive

"EVAs are optically clearer and more gas and vapor permeable than polyolefins."

"Resistance to water and solvents is critical in some applications. For example, in textile industry, resistance to dry cleaning solvents may be required. Permeability to gases and water vapor may or may not be desirable."

And an interesting article about gas permeability of corks and questions about silicone and paraffin wax permeability:

https://oxidised-burgs.wikispaces.com/Corks

"Again according to Wikipedia, the solid forms of paraffin, called paraffin wax, are from the heaviest molecules from C20 to C40. Paraffin is also widely described to be gas permeable, but I could never quite find out how gas permeable the solid (wax) forms are."

"So maybe silicone coatings are more gas permeable than paraffin coatings, but how much more permeable are they? And what is the ultimate significance to the oxidation debate? At this point it is still unclear."