Red Stripe Bottles

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TheBroonery

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Location
Gaithersburg, MD
Has anyone been successful in removing the paint from red strip bottles? I like the shape of them and would like to fill some with homebrew but the paint won't even scratch off. I've tried soaking the outside of one in paint thinner - did nothing. As of yesterday afternoon I've had one soaking in muriatic acid. It's actually melting the steel soup can that it's in but doing nothing to the painted red stripe logo. Any more suggestions??
 
I'll try the CLR next time. I'm surprised the acid isn't doing anything but melting through a steel soup can. I've got the whole experiment in the bottom of an empty plastic bucket in the garage so even if it does melt completely it should stay contained in the plastic.
 
There has been some threads out here that state undiluted CLR works. I was unaware of the "undiluted" part and mine ended up being about 2/3 CLR and 1/3 water. The white paint came off with a little steel wool scrubbing, but the red didn't come off for me, likely because of the water.

I've also read about undiluted StarSan but I haven't tried that myself
 
I've had good luck using a star-san solution in double the reccomended concentration. I let the bottles soak for 3-5 days, and 90% of the time the paint will just wipe off. Every so often it doesn't work. Sometimes the red paint takes a light scrubbing with a green 3M pad. This has worked for me with many brands, including red stripe.
 
If you can get your hands on some Full Sail Session Lagers, they have a similar shape with paper labels.
 
Aircraft stripper on a rag?
Nasty stuff, but it'll take anything off a piece of metal. It should work equally well on glass.
 
/shrug - I have a sandblaster in my garage.

Compared to the stuff I see in pics here, it's not really a stretch.
 
I wanted to use Red Stripe bottles for my Red Stripe clone recipe, but decided that removing the paint would make it too much trouble. Instead I bought a bunch of this Prestige Lager (from Haiti). It's in the same bottles as Red Stripe, but has easily removable paper labels.

See if you can find some, and save some time/effort.

prestige.jpg
 
North Peak Brewing Company started using stubbies recently. Actually, they just started selling their beer in bottles recently. I don't know if you can get them near you, but it's worth looking into.
 
+1 on Star San. I use it to remove the paint from Stone bottles. I use it at a dilution of 1oz to 1 gallon or 5x recommended strength. The stone bottles soak for less than 12 hours and the paint basically rinses off or wipes clean with one wipe.
 
Red strip, red stripe...whats the difference : ) A serious copper scrubber with star san x 2 and some elbow grease will kill a paint label.
 
I take the red stripe labels off all the time, undiluted CLR works, fill the inside with water and leave it standing up soaking for maybe an hour then just wipe off with paper towel. The only time I've had it not work is on two Red Stripe bottles I had laying around for about 2 years.
 
I had a red stripe bottle as a decoration in the bottom of a fish tank once. After about 4 months i removed all the tank decor for a good cleaning. I ran the bottle under hot water and the label just wiped off with a wet rag.

Before you give up on the red stripe bottles just put them in a bucket of water, put a lid on it and forget them for a few months while you bottle in something else. Not very practical, i realize this, but it beats pitching good usable bottles.
 
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