De-labeling bottles and Bottle Sanitizing

I started my Holiday Ale back in November thinking it may be done for the holidays / New Years. Not quite! This beer has been difficult, not hard, but difficult like a hyperactive 5 year old. I had 2 cases of 22oz bottles I was going to use for this ale, age it for about 8 months and have them with Thanksgiving. Of coarse there has been something with every stage of this beer, would just go to show that this easy step of bottling would be any different. What I didn’t realize is one of the cases of bottles had the original labels still on them. Time for a lesson in de-labeling!

Labels just fall off

DE- LABELING:

When I started, I would buy cases of Bass Ale because the labels came off so easily and I liked the beer. I quickly became sick of Bass Ale, so what ever beer I bought, I would soak them in water and use a razor blade to scrape off the labels… what a pain that was. I would inevitably cut my self doing it this way. On a forum I read about using oxy-clean to do this. People were swearing by it, so I gave it try. All i have to say is WOW, i wish i had heard about this when I started.

Here’s what you need:

• 5 gallon bucket (I use a Home Depot bucket)
• Oxy-Clean Versatile

a fallen label

It is pretty simple, fill the five gallon bucket with water so that it is 3/4 full. Add 1.5 – 2 scoops of Oxy-Clean to water and swirl it to mix up the solution. Submerge your bottles, let them sit for 6 hours or over night. It isn’t going to hurt anything to leave it overnight. It does a great job dissolving the glue and the labels literally fall off the bottle.

After the bottles come out make sure you rinse them well.

BOTTLE SANITIZING:

If you have a dishwasher bottle sanitizing is a cinch. Simply load your CLEAN bottle upside down and run your dishwasher on hot wash. Don’t use any soap, it can ruin the head of your beer. After the cycle has run, leave your bottles in there until they cool. If you don’t open the door you can keep them in there for several hours. If you try to bottle while the bottles are too hot you run the risk of cracking a bottle or killing the yeast