Bottles (again)
Like a broken record, I prepared bottles, again.
Had to take care of my least favorite homebrew chore again today; de-label, clean, rinse, and sanitize bottles. The only good side to this is that there will soon be another batch bottled, hopefully this week. This time it will be the Dubbel. This also reinforced why I’ve got to get on top of kegging, one big “bottle” to deal with instead of 50 small ones.
January 21st, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Kegs have there pluses and minuses – the simplified sanitation and prep is certainly a big one in the plus category. In the negative – You have to drink a big quantity in a go rather than having lots of variety in smaller quantities…
I’ve got a garage workbench full of belgian and 12oz bottles to strip the labels off of real soon – and I am dreading it.
January 21st, 2008 at 7:05 pm
If you soak the bottles in a hot strong PBW mixture they come right off. If you soak them in just a regular PBW mix (regardless of temperature and strength) they’ll come off after a good soak, like overnight.
January 22nd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Oh yeah – I learned that trick a while back. I use my 14 gallon kettle, false bottom (to keep labels from clogging the valve) about 7 gallons of 150-160 deg PBW… A broken airlock makes a remarkably good filling device when coupled with some 1/2″ tubing and kettle valve… Once full, the go into the kettle for their soak. Its still a PITA rinsing them and dealing with the more stubborn glues that don’t want to let go – Victory and Dogfish bottles are very well behaved. Brooklyn Brewing Co, Weyerbacher & a few others – Not so much. The worst are those semi-metallic ones from Sam Adams and Unibroue. I rip those things off by hand as much as possible before the soak – Otherwise the gold foil disintegrates in the hot PBW and sticks to everything – including the inside of the bottles.
Bottle delabeling is by far one of the biggest suck jobs of homebrewing. I’d rather clean a mash tun with a tooth brush than delabel bottles. The only close second is canning starter wort.
January 22nd, 2008 at 6:22 pm
“I’d rather clean a mash tun with a tooth brush than delabel bottles. ”
My new favorite homebrewing quote.