A tip for homebrewers

[Bob C]

I know there are a few fellow brewers here. My least favorite part of the hobby has been stripping the commercial labels off bottles before I "promote" them to hold my brew.

A Google search turned up a tip to use OxyClean. I filled a plastic cooler with bottles, standing up, filled and covered them with hot water, threw in a scoop of OxyClean and closed the cooler overnight. The next morning, the labels had fallen off and the bottles were clean. You still need to rinse the bottles well, but no more so than if you used chlorine bleach to sterilize them.

There was a little bit of glue residue on some of them, but it came off with an easy wipe under running water.

I wish it had occurred to me to look for a better solution years ago. I hope this tip helps some of you.