A small experiment in which the de-label-ability of beer bottles is tested...

So the good news is that my dad and I are gearing up for our next couple of home-brews - it's been a while since our pre-Christmas brew, but we've been planning and investing in some new kit and are tentatively aiming to get the brew underway next Sunday.  More details nearer the time!

We've decided to do two brews in quick succession, with the aim of kegging the first one and then try bottling the second one.  We reckon we'll need around 60 330ml bottles for this, so we have been manfully forcing down a selection of beers over the past few weeks in order to have enough bottles.  As you can imagine, this has been a terrible hardship...

Having built up a supply of a good couple of dozen bottles, I decided to spend some time de-labelling them today.  I'd thought this would be a relatively simple process.  I was wrong - some breweries use labels which are so heavily glued in place that it's a nightmare trying to get them unpeeled!  So, for anyone trying to go through a similar process, here's my scientifically accurate top tips for which beers you should seek out and which you should avoid!

The hit list

• Brewdog - turns out their labels are actually plastic, so a quick 5 minute soak and the labels elegantly peel off in one piece.  Only one of the bottles I had left any glue residue, the rest were as clean as a whistle.
• St Andrew's Brewing Company - paper labels, but not too heavily glued so they come off easily after soaking - albeit they break up into several pieces.
• Mikkeller - mostly paper labels (or those that I had were, anyway) but these came off great after a quick soak.

The shit list

• Redchurch Brewery - good beer (their IPA, if I remember right) but the label was extremely heavily glued into place.  A total nightmare to remove.
• Kernel - on the plus side they have small labels, but pretty securely glued on and took some effort to get off.

The hit and miss list

• Fyne Ales - their Sanda Black IPA label came off in a trice, but Zombier was a hardier one and caused some problems.  Seems appropriate, somehow.

So there we go - take from that what you will!  Time to go and add another bottle to the stock, I think - I've got a Kernel Centennial IPA waiting for me in the fridge!