One of the "chores" of getting ready for homebrewing is the dreaded bottle washing day. I've been saving up all of my beer bottles for the last entire year and ended up with over 4 huge trash bags full of 12oz, 22oz, and the assorted odd size bottles. When I end up getting to the point where I'm ready to bottle I want to use as few bottles as possible to store my 5 gallon batch in. Hence, I first want to use my big 22oz bomber bottles.
I spent an hour sorting through my bottle collection. All of those big bombers and 16oz bottles that I found I put off to the side. I'd focus on these today. After sifting through a couple hundred bottles I managed to find 26 large bottles. All of these had labels, some had was coatings, and even others had foil wrappings. It wasn't going to be easy getting all that stuff off those bottles.
Ten years ago when I used to homebrew, I decided to just buy a couple cases of new brown bomber bottles. Well this time around, I wanted to save a few bucks and re-use bottles that I had already used.
I filled up my basement utility sink up with hot hot water and soaked all 26 bottles in there for about 3 hours or so. I figured that would help loosen up those labels and other items. I came back after several hours and tried peeling off a label. It seemed to work for the most part but managed to leave a lot of glue residue on the glass. I was going to need something to scrub off that pesky glue.
I found a hard bristled scrub brush on my workbench and tried out a bottle on it. Wow - that brush worked great! The glue residue came right off with very little effort. Some of the bottles gave up their adornments better than others. Some European bottles has a glue that was downright nasty to get off. On other bottles, the foil wrappers at the top of the bottle required a sharp knife to scrape off.
I was lucky enough to have the assistance of my lovely wife and daughter to help me peel labels and scrub bottles. Having a work crew of 3 helped get all of the labels off those bottles in about 45 minutes.
In hind sight, I realized there are probably better ways to remove labels. My friends on Twitter told me how they do it.
olllllo, Jeffporn and BigKahunaBrew say they throw all of their rinsed empties into a 35g garbage can and use oxyclean on them overnight. Any labels that don't fall off they pitch.
FieldpointeBrew suggested trying some PBW brewery wash. This stuff is supposedly amazing at cleaning all sorts of brewing related items.
I'm heading to my local homebrew shop this week to pick up more supplies. I've definitely have PBW and Star-San on my list of items to stock for my home brewery.
Next step is to wash these bottle well in the dish washer and store them in a clean place. Then on bottling day I'll dip them in a no-rinse sanitizer and I'll be ready for the beer!
Continue reading: The trials and tribulations of bottling beer.
Related articles:
- Homebrew shopping list.
- Putting together the home brewery.
- My humble homebrew beginnings.
- Homebrew beer batch 001 tasting notes.
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Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Bottle washing day
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There are two tricks I use: First, I rinse the bottles out well right after their original contents are consumed.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I soak them in water with a bit of ammonia. Ammonia is very effective and much less expensive than specialty cleaners. The labels usually just fall right off. I rinse them out a couple more times after soaking to make sure that all of the the ammonia is gone.
This is tedious, probably just as tedious as any other method of removing labels, but if you're good about rinsing well after drinking you don't have to do it very often.
Before bottling I visually inspect each bottle to make sure there's no mold or other contaminates in them (very important), rinse them again, and then sanitize them in the dishwasher.
I've found that nothing makes me want to give up homebrewing more than having to delabel a batch of bottles. To lessen the frustration, I delabel them as I drink them so I don't get such a concentrated dose of annoyance.
ReplyDeleteSpot on eCOBrew - I always ensure rinsing out my bottles right after I'm done drinking. Saves a whole lotta effort later on. Will keep the ammonia in mind.
ReplyDeleteKC -I hear ya. Bottles are a pain but luckily we only have to clean off labels every once in a while. Once you've got your stock of bottles then its just a matter of keeping them clean and sanitized. But ya, still a pain. It'll drive me to kegging someday I'm sure.
Oh man, the joys of taking labels off. I have been making a habit of saving labels lately. So if it's one I don't have, I usually just let it soak overnight in a sink full of water to save the label. Otherwise I soak them all in a tub of sanitizer. After 5-10 minutes they just slide right off the bottles. If you're interested, hit me up and I can get you the name of the sanitizer we use to do it.
ReplyDelete+1 on OxyClean to remove labels. It's incredibly effective.
ReplyDeleteI swear some labels are cemented on the bottles and nothing gets them off! My number one least favorite thing to do is strip labels off bottles (next least fave? Bottling, itself!).
ReplyDeleteHence why I keg, but considering all the money spent on the current system I can see putting it off for the short term. It does make life alot easier.
ReplyDeleteKegging is in my future I'm sure. It's just a matter of when.
ReplyDeleteOxyClean works wonders to remove the label and glue (I soaked for roughly 4 hours in hot water)
ReplyDelete