Whiskey labels....

Can you expand? Do you peel the labels off the bottles?

I like the idea.. kinda like scrapbooking for scotch drinkers. How do you get the labels off?

Soaking them I imagine - hot soapy water not whisky :-)

Soaking in regular water doesn't work on many/most labels, an onophile friend of mine told me there is a product marketed to the wine community just for this.. but I have had not bad luck with regular wallpaper stripper (available at Lowes or Home Despot). The only problem is that if it doesn't work the label is ruined.

As a christmas gift a couple years ago my wife wrote to some of the distilleries that I patronize a lot and asked them to send her some labels so she could make me a whisky note book.. she got a lot of replies.. and I got a nice book for my tasing notes.

I'm afraid I don't just keep the labels, I keep the whole bottle and the packaging. And I'm running out of space real fast!

Well there are two types of fixation to the bottle, the older versions and some new ones too, are glued to the bottle with classic glue material. You plunge the bottle in "very" hot water for some time , when the water becomes less hot you start to peel it of with the help of a sharp knife under the water level, untill it starts loosening . Then yoyu pull it gently off and put it on a tissu to dry out. Afterwards you make them flat by storing them for some time between the pages of a heavy book.

The second type is the selfsticking glue labels which I take off by using a thermo heater used to peel off paint or wallpapers off. You hold the bottleneck with one hand, do not worry the heat is very local, and cover the surface of the label for about a minute with the thermo heater, then with a sharp knife I lift up a corner of the label to look if the glue between bottle and label has melted and then I take off the whole label and fix it to either a piece of paper or plastic, because the glue is till sticking of course.

Then I cut out the plastic/paper around the label and ....finished !

expensivevino even took the time to come and demonstrate it at my home and it actually works wonderfully. I've been collecting labels as per his instructions since and the 'loss ratio' (the labels that rip or get lost in any other way) is less than 10%. Great stuff!

@markjedi1 How many labels do you have in your scrapbook now?

@PeatAndMeat Sorry, I seemed to have missed your question that by now is almost a year old... By now I have about 150 labels in my scrapbook (and about 50 bottles still to tackle).

Intriguing idea this. Has anyone tried using a steamer? (This sort of thing: overstock.com/Home-Garden/… )

I remember trying (unsuccessfully) to soak the labels off, so maybe it's time to buy some machinery.

I am a home brewer and do this often with beer bottles. Just soak them in a sink full of warm water and dish soap for an hour and they majority of the labels will slide off. Sometimes you will need to lightly scrub the remainder of the glue off the bottle. This works for most bottles, but there are some brewers that use more stubborn glue.

I should also mention that the labels turn to mush with this method...

I just did this with a dozen of the High West bottles. Soaked in a hot bath for 5 minutes, the labels just released. I had them all laid out on the sink and as they were drying I went back in to check their condition and one of the cats tried to run across them. Picked up about a half a dozen labels on his feet, poor guy. I had to chase him around to get the labels off his feet.

I'm about a 100 bottles into this now and I can say with some authority that there are three ways to get labels off: 1. soak in warm water (Highland Park labels almost fall off if you just look at water), 2. in a large pot of boiling water, working with a razor blade (Talisker and Aberlour), 3. Recently discovered- the Wife's hair dryer (Laphroaig- the toughest so far!)