Sanitizing bottles with attached labels

Hello. I have many beer bottles with attached labels; e.g. such as those offered by Northern Brewer. I’d like to reuse the bottles. Can I sanitize the bottles with attached label? Does the label matter? Thank you.

Labels don’t matter but most people try to remove them. A good soak in starsan will loosen up the label and you can scrape it off with the scrubber side of a dish sponge.

You can put beer in bottles that have lables or not.

I used a good soak and a razorblade to get the lables off.

To sanitize bottles I find it easier to put a bunch in sanitizing solution (star-san or bleach) and then move them to rinsing then drying one at a time (it takes a few rinses) and the lables would fall off when in the bucket.

This is the second post where I’ve seen you mention rinsing after using starsan. That is not necessary and actually flat out wrong. You’re dirtying your sanitized vessel by rinsing with tap water after using starsan.

So what… you leave the foam in there? (I asked you that on the other post too…)

yes…you’ve never seen the old “don’t fear the foam” NB videos obviously

Starsan is made to be a no rinse sanitizer. rinsing reduces or eliminates it’s effectiveness

What is on the inside is what counts. Sure sanitize the bottle and refill with the old label on. I have some Grolsch bottles full of mead that still have the original small labels on them from about 10 years ago. One of these days I will remove them :grin:

Beer bottles I do not rinse after StarSan I just leave them upside down. Fermenters that i’m about to stick wort in I rinse all the StarSan residue out of. I trust my tap water to be sanitary. If I don’t rinse then the wort foams up pretty bad and gets all over the place. I’ve never had an issue with rinsing.

When i brew, my fermenters have about a gallon of star san in them… I keep the surfaces wetted… I believe it is stated to have at least 2 minutes contact time with the star san… Just before its time to rack into the fermenter… I dump the star san into a keg that I store the stuff in… Then proceed… I think it was Flars that told me not to be afraid… I listened… I’m not afraid… Foam and even the wee bit left… not afraid…
Wasn’t it Mueller Brau that shows his tub with star san, ice and beer bottles… Pull the bottle out… Dump out the star san and fill with beer… NO RINSING…
Have some faith and give it a whirl… One less step in the process. :sunglasses:
Sneezles61

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I miss both those guys. Mueller is responsible for my lackadaisical approach to keg cleaning. He always he’d rinse his kegs in beer when refilling them.

The foam from Starsan used to bother me but now I just dump out whatever foam comes out easily and fill the bottle, keg or fermenter. Never had a problem.

I always rinsed my bottles after sterilizing them with a dilute bleach mixture. And then let them dry upside down and store them in a covered box. Never had any issues…

I keg now and do the same but I clean the keg with Oxy-Clean and then sterilize with Star San before rinsing.