A friend of mine gave me over 100 old, dirty wine bottles that had been sitting in his garage for several years, so I have an opportunity to experiment with removing wine labels and cleaning them.
I typically soak bottles in plain water or water with a little bleach and then (after a day or two) I use the straight back edge of a table knife to scrape off the labels. I know most people use some sort of chemical, but this method actually works fairly well (and I use a blunt knife instead of a razor blade because I don't want to worry about scratching myself or the wine bottle if I get tired). After the label (or most of it if it's one of those stubborn ones) is removed I finish taking off any residual glue with a scrubbing pad (either in water or under running water, which helps keep the glue pliable while I get it off the bottle).
Today, I was telling a homebrewing friend about this technique and she asked what might happen if I ran some bottles through the dishwasher - not to clean them, but to use the hot steam to loosen the labels and soften any residual gunk on the inside. I decided to try it.
I already had 17 bottles soaking in the bathtub all day (my usual technique), so when I got home I just threw 23 more into the dishwasher on a hot cycle (with no detergent). It took me about 25 minutes to remove the labels from the bathtub-soaking room-temperature bottles but there was a little residual glue that wouldn't come off some of the bottles. Not too bad but not perfect.
When I finished with the 17 bottles, the dishwasher had been running a bit, so I opened it up and took out a few bottles and then closed it so the rest could continue to steam. Right away, most of the labels just fell right off! There was some scraping to do on some of the bottles, but it was MUCH easier than my usual method (which is pretty easy) and, because the glue had been heated, it wiped away a LOT easier than usual when I used the scrubbing pad. I just kept removing a few bottles at a time and working on them, restarting the dishwasher occasionally so that the ones inside would stay steamy. It took about 20 minutes to remove labels from those 23 bottles (so, a little quicker than the other method) but the real benefit was how CLEAN the bottles got on the outside - NO GLUE!
Now, I should mention that some of the labels actually fell off while they were steaming inside the dishwasher, so I had to make sure to get those out of there at the end. But overall this method was so easy and simple I wanted to post it.
'Hope this is helpful.
I typically soak bottles in plain water or water with a little bleach and then (after a day or two) I use the straight back edge of a table knife to scrape off the labels. I know most people use some sort of chemical, but this method actually works fairly well (and I use a blunt knife instead of a razor blade because I don't want to worry about scratching myself or the wine bottle if I get tired). After the label (or most of it if it's one of those stubborn ones) is removed I finish taking off any residual glue with a scrubbing pad (either in water or under running water, which helps keep the glue pliable while I get it off the bottle).
Today, I was telling a homebrewing friend about this technique and she asked what might happen if I ran some bottles through the dishwasher - not to clean them, but to use the hot steam to loosen the labels and soften any residual gunk on the inside. I decided to try it.
I already had 17 bottles soaking in the bathtub all day (my usual technique), so when I got home I just threw 23 more into the dishwasher on a hot cycle (with no detergent). It took me about 25 minutes to remove the labels from the bathtub-soaking room-temperature bottles but there was a little residual glue that wouldn't come off some of the bottles. Not too bad but not perfect.
When I finished with the 17 bottles, the dishwasher had been running a bit, so I opened it up and took out a few bottles and then closed it so the rest could continue to steam. Right away, most of the labels just fell right off! There was some scraping to do on some of the bottles, but it was MUCH easier than my usual method (which is pretty easy) and, because the glue had been heated, it wiped away a LOT easier than usual when I used the scrubbing pad. I just kept removing a few bottles at a time and working on them, restarting the dishwasher occasionally so that the ones inside would stay steamy. It took about 20 minutes to remove labels from those 23 bottles (so, a little quicker than the other method) but the real benefit was how CLEAN the bottles got on the outside - NO GLUE!
Now, I should mention that some of the labels actually fell off while they were steaming inside the dishwasher, so I had to make sure to get those out of there at the end. But overall this method was so easy and simple I wanted to post it.
'Hope this is helpful.
