How To: Wax Bottles - Methods and Techniques Discussions on Home Brew Forums

BenS

I am giving away my saison as a gift this year and decided to dressy the bottles up a bit more than I have in the past. I figured labeling and waxing the caps would give the beer a nice presentation and may persuade people that I am awesome.

To begin, I took out a sauce pot and filled it about 2/3 of the way full of oil. The oil will expand when heated so don't fill it all the way up. Then I added 8 10" glue sticks, and 20 red"ish" colors crayons to a disposable can placed in the center of the oil. I roughly chopped them up to speed the melting process.

It took about 10 min to melt after I had gotten the oil bath up to 375F. I tried to keep the oil at that temp during the entire dipping process.

After dipping the bottles, I spun it a few time to remove the excess wax and allowed it to drip slightly.

Before:

After:

BenS

This is the first time I have tried wax dipping or labeling and I am pretty impressed at how nice it makes a plain old bottle of beer look. Those are champagne bottles if anyone is interested.

Thym

very, very cool.

C_B

Did that mix of glue sticks to crayons seem to be a good combination? It looks like it came out very nice.

BenS

Yea. It wasn't nearly as sticky or thick as I thought all that glue would be. The key is to keep adding crayons and heat until you get the consistancy you want. I never measured the wax temp, but the hotter it gets the more it runs. I did a few trial bottles to figure it out.

C_B

What kind of oil? Deep flyer oil or some other type of cooking oil?

BenS

chandlerbang said:
What kind of oil? Deep flyer oil or some other type of cooking oil?

I just used deep fryer oil because I have 5 gal of it in my garage. It's not really important what you use. I just wanted to use something that could get hotter than boiling water. I'm certain that would not be hot enough. I've heard of people heating it directly over the stove burner but I have an electric stove.

BeerEagle

Nice, thanks.

viking73

I must try this...

ceannt

Interesting..........
must try.....

ceannt

I have a gas cooktop.... I may try to skip the oil, and do direct heat...... have to be careful not to scorch I reckon.....

Fuzzy

if i ever have something around long enough to fancy it up, i'm doin this.

themonstermasher

This looks pretty cool. Is it cheaper than the wax beads from the home brew shop?

scoob

themonstermasher said:
This looks pretty cool. Is it cheaper than the wax beads from the home brew shop?

Compared to my homebrew shops price, it's way cheaper... When I did mine, I got the glue sticks from michaels on sale for 2 dollars for a massive bag of them, the crayons were some off brand I scored at Walgreens for 1 dollar, I bought two boxes. So a total of less than three dollars if you only account for the glue sticks I used, plenty of wax to do a grip of bottles and I saved my can for later reuse.

mors

I just use paraffin in a double boiler (metal can inside a pot with a few inches of water). Works great. bought a 10lb block of paraffin for like $10

C_B

mors said:
I just use paraffin in a double boiler (metal can inside a pot with a few inches of water). Works great. bought a 10lb block of paraffin for like $10

Interesting. Do you color the paraffin with anything?

Benvarine

I heard of a brewery using the crayons from the brew pub side. Restaurants usually just throw those out. It would be a good source and help repurpose some typical waste.

mors

C_dubbs said:

mors said:
I just use paraffin in a double boiler (metal can inside a pot with a few inches of water). Works great. bought a 10lb block of paraffin for like $10

Interesting. Do you color the paraffin with anything?

I have not colored it... It's usually whitish without any coloring added... I suppose you could melt some crayons in there with it maybe?

C_B

mors said:

C_dubbs said:

mors said:
I just use paraffin in a double boiler (metal can inside a pot with a few inches of water). Works great. bought a 10lb block of paraffin for like $10

Interesting. Do you color the paraffin with anything?

I have not colored it... It's usually whitish without any coloring added... I suppose you could melt some crayons in there with it maybe?

That's what I was thinking. Or food colouring? I don't know how well that would mix.

Thym

C_dubbs said:

mors said:

C_dubbs said:

mors said:
I just use paraffin in a double boiler (metal can inside a pot with a few inches of water). Works great. bought a 10lb block of paraffin for like $10

Interesting. Do you color the paraffin with anything?

I have not colored it... It's usually whitish without any coloring added... I suppose you could melt some crayons in there with it maybe?

That's what I was thinking. Or food colouring? I don't know how well that would mix.

most people use crayons and a bit of hot melt glue gun glue.

C_B

Lakewood said:

C_dubbs said:

mors said:

C_dubbs said:

mors said:
I just use paraffin in a double boiler (metal can inside a pot with a few inches of water). Works great. bought a 10lb block of paraffin for like $10

Interesting. Do you color the paraffin with anything?

I have not colored it... It's usually whitish without any coloring added... I suppose you could melt some crayons in there with it maybe?

That's what I was thinking. Or food colouring? I don't know how well that would mix.

most people use crayons and a bit of hot melt glue gun glue.

Right, but is that cheaper than 10 pounds of paraffin wax for 10 bucks? Prolly not.

Thym

C_dubbs said:

Lakewood said:

C_dubbs said:

mors said:

C_dubbs said:

mors said:
I just use paraffin in a double boiler (metal can inside a pot with a few inches of water). Works great. bought a 10lb block of paraffin for like $10

Interesting. Do you color the paraffin with anything?

I have not colored it... It's usually whitish without any coloring added... I suppose you could melt some crayons in there with it maybe?

That's what I was thinking. Or food colouring? I don't know how well that would mix.

most people use crayons and a bit of hot melt glue gun glue.

Right, but is that cheaper than 10 pounds of paraffin wax for 10 bucks? Prolly not.

i'd probably cut the glue with paraffin, but still use some glue to give it a bit of tackiness and compliance. straight paraffin won't adhere to the bottle and it's pretty brittle so i think it would have a tendency to crack and chip easily.

as for the colorant, crayons work well and they are pretty cheap.

Fuzzy

C_dubbs said:

Lakewood said:

C_dubbs said:

mors said:

C_dubbs said:

mors said:
I just use paraffin in a double boiler (metal can inside a pot with a few inches of water). Works great. bought a 10lb block of paraffin for like $10

Interesting. Do you color the paraffin with anything?

I have not colored it... It's usually whitish without any coloring added... I suppose you could melt some crayons in there with it maybe?

That's what I was thinking. Or food colouring? I don't know how well that would mix.

most people use crayons and a bit of hot melt glue gun glue.

Right, but is that cheaper than 10 pounds of paraffin wax for 10 bucks? Prolly not.

but you can steal the crayons from your kids! that's sorta free.

mors

yeah throwing in some glue sticks might be a good idea. The paraffin does break off the neck of the bottle a bit I have found...but it's still is sealed. I originally bought the big block of it to wax a 5.4 gallon barrel I had. I waxed the sides of it and left the ends unwaxed to try and replicate the oxygen transfer of a full sized wine barrel. Not sure if It worked or not yet... I have a flanders red aging in it for about 3 months now... guess we'll see in about 9 months or so....