Beer Forum

I'm sure everyone has their own techniques for this and I'd love to hear them!

However, when I first started out turning my commercial beer bottles into newly acquired homebrew bottles I had some questions about cleaning them and getting the labels off so that they were ready for sanitation and brewing. I compiled a how to that I've found very effective on my brewing blog that I'd like to share with people new to brewing while still getting feedback from you pro's!

Let me know your thoughts

How To Clean Bottles For Your Homebrew

I personally don't even use any soap or cleaner when pealing labels. Hot water alone does the job just fine for most labels. As for cleaning, don't know if this is the most effective method but I've just scrubbed hard and rinsed with water and then sanitized before bottling.

An overnight soak in hot PBW, blast with a bottle washer, then into a bucket of starsan. I haen't seen a bottle yet that's too gunked up to resist that treatment.

I soak in oxy clean (or PBW) for however long I feel like (usually a week because I forget about them). Pull them out of that, peel what's left of the labels off if need be, and run them through the dishwasher with no detergent.

I usually give a new bottle a strong rinse after emptying it, soak it inhot water in the kitchen sink for a couple hours and the 90% of the label peels right off and almost no effort with a scrubby pulls the rest off. a sanitation cycle with no soap in the dishwashah and spritz with a spraybottle of starsan later and no worries yet.

A good rinse could be the best piece of advice you can give anyone about cleaning bottles. However, I find sometimes I wake up and my bottles are all empty and the yeast cake is dried up. Its my bad for drinking to much and getting really lazy...

Depends on what I'm starting with.


The only really exciting thing I've done in recent times is the gloves.
I have a pair of nirtile gauntleted gloves that fit nice and tight.
I put them on over a pair of OBGYN Veterinary gloves that go all the way up to my shoulders. This makes me free from the annoying caustic or acid water getting inside my gloves and undermining the reason I'd use 'em in the first place. A glove full of Star San is as bad as no glove at all, maybe worse.

I get the OB gloves in packs of 100 for less than ten dollars from Jeffers Equine supply

I thought I had a photo but looks like Im going to have to take one. I do the soak in PBW and rinse. But what I do that might be different is I have a keg filled with starsan and Ive adapted my jet bottle washer to fit on the out fitting. With a short tube I can give my bottles a quick blast of sanitizer just before filling. Is it the best way? Im not sure but it works for when Im bottling.