I'm fairly new here, and for all I know, what I ran across tonight is old hat, and everyone already knows about it, but I thought I'd share, in case someone else out there has fingernails full of adhesive and wet paper, and a heart full of despair.
Tonight was bottling night. The first of many, I'm hoping. I like to brew in an eco-friendly fashion, and, I'm cheap, so bottling night involved gathering wine bottles from pretty much everyone I knew, removing labels, cleaning, and sanitizing.
I'd soaked my bottles for an inordinately long amount of time, and most of my labels still weren't peeling off well, so I left them while I tidied up the kitchen some more. As I was cleaning off the glass top stove, I looked at the tool in my hand, and had an epiphany. That little scraper tool that you can buy for scraping the stuck on bits off the top of a ceramic or glass top stove is PERFECT for removing labels, along with all their attendant adhesive gooeyness from those recycled bottles! What's more, the Stove Brite stuff that usually comes along with that when you buy a stove cleaning kit at Menards or Home Depot is really good at removing stubborn adhesive from bottles as well. I think rinsing well in that case goes without saying.
So there's my tip. I'm pretty sure, based on the amount of time I spent on one stupid bottle when I got started, that I save myself around two hours of time tonight, thus enabling me to proceed to the accomplished feeling of viewing a row of neatly corked bottles, all containing a vintage of my own making! (Ginger wine, btw.) Hopefully, this will help someone else whose environmental sense, and/or thriftiness cause them to recycle bottles!
Tonight was bottling night. The first of many, I'm hoping. I like to brew in an eco-friendly fashion, and, I'm cheap, so bottling night involved gathering wine bottles from pretty much everyone I knew, removing labels, cleaning, and sanitizing.
I'd soaked my bottles for an inordinately long amount of time, and most of my labels still weren't peeling off well, so I left them while I tidied up the kitchen some more. As I was cleaning off the glass top stove, I looked at the tool in my hand, and had an epiphany. That little scraper tool that you can buy for scraping the stuck on bits off the top of a ceramic or glass top stove is PERFECT for removing labels, along with all their attendant adhesive gooeyness from those recycled bottles! What's more, the Stove Brite stuff that usually comes along with that when you buy a stove cleaning kit at Menards or Home Depot is really good at removing stubborn adhesive from bottles as well. I think rinsing well in that case goes without saying.
So there's my tip. I'm pretty sure, based on the amount of time I spent on one stupid bottle when I got started, that I save myself around two hours of time tonight, thus enabling me to proceed to the accomplished feeling of viewing a row of neatly corked bottles, all containing a vintage of my own making! (Ginger wine, btw.) Hopefully, this will help someone else whose environmental sense, and/or thriftiness cause them to recycle bottles!