Removing Wine Bottle Labels Easily

 How many labels have you removed so you can reuse a wine bottle, how many are just to hard to remove so you toss them in the garbage? I had about 40-50 bottles I could not get the labels off without lots and lots of hard work so I decided to throw them away.  When I would go out to the garage I would see them over flowing the recycling bin and was thinking maybe there has to be a way to save them.  I decided I would try once more so I took about 6 of the impossible bottles and a couple easy to remove back to my wine cellar and determined I would find away to remove the labels without a lot of work.

I was thinking what do I have that will dissolve almost anything but is not too "dangerous". What I came up with is Soda Ash, Sodium Hydroxide, Goo Gone label solvent and dish soap. I got my 6.5 gallon bucket and added 5 gallons of warm water, 3/4 cup of soda ash, 1/2 cup Sodium Hydroxide, 1/4 cup Goo Gone solvent and 1/4 cup soap and submerge the bottles in the solution.  Make sure you use rubber gloves when working with Sodium Hydroxide.  I scritch the labels with a steak knife first to expose some of the glass then submerged the bottles in the solution. Came back the next day and was surprise the labels on the "hard to clean bottles" where starting to fall off and the "easy to clean bottles the labels had mostly falling off. I remove the easy to clean bottles and rinsed them off with soapy water. I let the rest sit for an another 2 days and the label and glue was mostly gone. I use a coarse stainless steel scrubber to quickly finish the job.

I been using the the same batch for about 3 weeks and it still working, not sure how many bottles batch  can clean.

Thanks
Quentin