Question:

Some labels are miserable ... even after soaking you have to pick the
label off a little at a time and no amount of scrubbing or scraping
removes all of the glue. Is there an easier way?

Answer:

A) Soak all your bottles in HOT soapy water with soap in it for a few
hours; most labels will come off readily.
B) Some glue isn't water soluble, so use some turpentine to dissolve
it; then use powdered soap to wash off the turpentine. Wallpaper
remover can also work well.
C) Occasionally expect to scrape off labels.


Tags: wine bottle scrubbing commercial

I was thinking about this yesterday when I was working on another 30 used bottles. After soaking, some labels are glued on, others are like a plastic film, and of course, there is always the easy ones.

So now, if I have a label that resists an hour soak like it just doesn't care, I take my swiss army knife to it. I scrape right through the label up and down in thin slices with the blade at a low angle, and just scrape away.

After that is done, there is absolutely no damage to the bottle, but most of the label is gone. At that point, take steel wool, I use the soapy kind, and just rub the glue off until the bottle is spotless. Even the most stubborn labels cannot resist this, and it maybe takes a minute or two for the most difficult label to be cleaned right off.

Presto, you have a spotless label, ready for use.

I don't really know much about wine labels, but for some of the tough beer label, soaking in hot water and Oxyclean works very well. Of course, there's always those tough ones.......

Cheers
Dave

GuitarLord5000 wrote:I don't really know much about wine labels, but for some of the tough beer label, soaking in hot water and Oxyclean works very well. Of course, there's always those tough ones.......

Cheers
Dave

X 2

I left all of the old labels on.

I started collecting different beer bottles when I started my beer tasting journey. All of which I'd display in my "trophy" case. After collecting 80 or so different bottles from some of the World's BEST breweries, my wife got tired of the kitchen looking like a college apartment, so she did some redecorating...i.e. all of my bottles got moved into a giant tub, and placed in the garage.

Opening that tub this morning, and cleaning those bottles was like looking at a scrapbook of myself becoming a man. lol

Seeing all of those different beer bottles in my fridge again is gonna be a sight only gourmet beer store owners get to appreciate. They may not taste like the prior resident brews, but the novelty is still pretty cool.

Pretty neat to have saved all of those bottles.

Hi...WallyTheWino
Keep them moist by spraying down with windex until they peel off or soak in soapy warm water. Some are harder to remove than others. If its the sticker variety (not just a glued label), they can be peeled off in whole without soaking if you are very careful not to let the adhesive peel away from the paper as you are peeling it away from the bottle.

I know saoking in PBW (powdered brewery wash)solution takes them right off in about 15 minutes, but unless you visit a homebrew shop, you probably won't be able to find it.

wreinmicheal,
Welcome to the forum and thanks for the posting the great tip on removing labels.

Yep, soaking and peeling with a straight edge works good. I use "goo-gone" to get the sticky stuff off and seems to work great. It's one of those things you have to weigh out. Do I spend the time scraping, or do I go buy bottles?


D.

I generally just soak the bottles in a chlorine-water solution for a day or so to remove as many labels as I can.

To remove what's left of the labels (i.e. the adhesive etc.) I simply scrub the bottles with one of those stainless steel or copper scrubbers from the grocery store.

This works really quite well and without a whole lot of effort.

- Scott