Beer Forum

For anyone who is currently doing what I am.... saving all the commercial brown bottles I drink for my own bottling... I have found that out of about 15 different craft beers that I regularly drink, Magic Hat specifically #9 ) has the easiest peeling labels. if you soak them for 5 min in water you can peel the labels pretty smoothly. it leaves a fair amount of glue behind but if you take a green dish scrubby pad to it under water, the glue comes off very very easily. on the flip side, firestone walker's union jack IPA is the most difficult label. (which sucks since that is one of my top 5 favorite beers of all time). all of that being said, if you soak your bottles for an hour or so in water you can pretty easily clean all the glue off of any bottle with a green dish scrubby pad with no soap or chemicals. just thought I would throw this out into the universe in case anyone wanted to purchase their beer based on label peeling easability (its not a real word but I don't care). ENJOY!

Try a hot PBW soak. Far superior to just water.

Deschutes were always easy peelers IIRC. Man, I don't miss those days.

I forget my process, but I used to use a strong bleach solution before the regular cleaning. But I lived in a town of 700 with 4 bars. I had more bottles than I could ever use.

Bells labels fall off in a pbw soak after about 3 minutes. It's magic!