It is worth it though when you tally up what you would have spent! $$$$$$$$$$$$$ Now you afford to get e that Christmas present youve always wanted to get me!
I am so fortunate that a local winery saves their empty bottles for me. I agree that it is a pain to clean and take off the labels, but when I think about the savings, it seems worthwhile.
That makes my back hurt thinking about 15 1/2 cases. Good job. I guess it's better to slave away and get that nasty job done for several bottling sessions all at once.
It's sort of a self-perpetuating cycle in my house. I have a ton of full carboys, I clean a ton of bottles. I geta bunch of winebottled, then the carboys are all sad and empty so I make more wine...
My local winery called yesterday and said they have 14 cases of bottles ready for me to pick up. Looks like I will be doing the same thing! Don't even want to think about it but am not really complaining.
My wife and I have become friends with the tasting room manager at a local winery. Awhile back I talked her into saving empty bottles for me. After cleaning bottles for the last 2 days and doing a bottle count, I am going to have to tell her that at this time I need no more bottles.
I now have 725 bottles cleaned and stored away upstairs. As of right now I have 77 gals of wine at different stages of bulk aging and will not be bottling anything before June or July.
I don't know how you can clean that many at one time. I have around 20 cases that are rinsed out but not cleaned or "de-labeled". Its all I can do to get 30 cleaned out and ready to go at one time. I have been bottling around 1 kit a month for the last few months and will probably keep on that pace for awhile yet.
Nice to have a source of good bottles and probably most if not all are the same type (size etc). Makes for a nice uniform look!
Bob you need to be careful what you ask for. You do realize you signed a verbal contract for 3 years to take all their empty bottles and there is a triple indemnity if you break that contract early- then you need to take 3 wineries bottles for 9 years........................................................
Mike, It's nice when they all come from the same place because you know exactly what it takes to get the labels off. I can do 2 cases of these in 1hr 15 min.
Very impressive, I just did about 45 or 50 bottles, can't imagine doing 15 cases at once.
Has anyone tried to build some contraption to remove the labels by machine either dry or wet? That seems the most time consuming.
I said a few posts back that I thought I had enough bottles washed, cleaned and ready to go, BUT yesterday I got a phone call from a local winery that my wife and I frequent quite often. We have become good friends with the tasting room manager. She said that they had had problems at bottling time and that they were having to redo some bottles of wine. Since they are a commercial winery the rules in their state govern that they cannot use a bottle over once corked. She said that they had a few cases of clear longneck 750ml bottles that they were going to throw out and she wondered if I wanted them. Since I have very few of this type of bottle I said " SURE "
When I got there to pick them up here's what I got
23 cases of bottles with no labels attached!!!!!!! All I have to do is clean them.