Painting bottles?

[eloro]

Well, I've got a lot of Corona bottles sitting around that I've been saving for a while. I really like the long neck and shape of the bottle and I'd like to reuse them, but anything short of a power sander doesn't seems to take off the damn label! Its purely cosmetic I know, but if I didn't care about the final product's appearance I might as well use coke bottles, right? I also tend to give away 6 packs of my brews that turned out good to friends and family, so putting them in old bottles doesn't really cut it.

So I got to thinking, can I just put a few layers of spray paint on these suckers and then maybe paint a design over them? I'm not great at the whole design painting but my girlfriend is! Anyone tried this? Does it turn out ok, or look goofy? Will the paint render the bottle unusable or what?

 

[emjay]

Letting them soak for a long time in oxyclean seems to allow that kind of label to come off.

My bigger issue with the Corona bottles is the fact that it's clear glass, which is REALLY bad for beer.

I do actually use just a SINGLE Corona bottle in every batch though, but only to let me monitor clarity.

 

[eloro]

They've been soaking for a few days in very diluted bleach water. After I do that I will usually run my bottles through the dishwasher on high heat with no detergent a few times to make certain no bleach is left. I've tried a lot on these. Razor, acetone, alcohol, a butane torch, etc etc.

Oxyclean sounds promising, might try that if the bleach doesn't work. Someone told me that part of the Corona label is colored glass though.

The beer skunking in clear bottles is a big concern as well. I usually use brown bottles.

So if I used a black/brown spray paint that would be killing two birds with one stone. Just wondering if it would work.

 

[passedpawn]

Painting would be a great idea. Just putting handprints on there would be cool. Make sure you post pics if you do this. Good luck!

 

[subliminalurge]

Don't have the slightest clue on how to paint glass, but I will throw this in....

About 6 years ago when I was just getting started brewing I did a little experiment. I had brewed up a nice double IPA and bottled it. Being low on good bottles, I had to use some Corona bottles to get it all.

Here's the experiment. I had been reading a debate on a message board like this one about how much light could really affect the flavor of a beer... After everything was all nice and carbed and ready to drink I grabbed two bottles of it. One in a Corona bottle and one in a Sam Adams bottle. I took them outside and let them sit in the sun for 20 minutes, then I brought them back in to the fridge overnight to chill.

The Corona bottle was undrinkable even for my buddy who thinks Natty Ice is good stuff. The Sam Adams bottle was off, but not bad. Bottles from the basement that had never seen daylight were frickin' awesome, regardless of the color of glass.

If you want to paint bottles and make them look pretty, my advice would be to do it with brown ones.

The only reason Corona gets away with the clear bottles is the "unique" flavor of their beer. It already tastes a bit skunky anyway. I can tell you from experience and testing (more then just the one test I mentioned) that when a GOOD beer gets exposed to light, even for a short time (10 or 20 minutes), there is a noticeable difference in flavor.

Having said all that, I do actually like Corona, it's one of my guilty pleasures. So I do have some bottles sitting around, and I use them when I'm in a pinch. I just make damned sure to keep those bottles in the dark right up until I pry the cap off. After the tests I've done I've even gone so far as to remove the light bulbs from my beer fridge just to avoid that 5 seconds of light exposure when I reach in and grab one.

And I sure as hell don't serve the beer from the clear bottles to anyone else. Guests always get a brown bottle.

(Here's an experiment to try... Go buy a 12 pack of Corona (enclosed in a box, protected from light) and a 6 pack of Corona (top of bottle is open, exposed to light). If you have a single functioning taste bud, you'll be able to tell the difference.) I bet at the end of this experiment you'll wish you had bought 18 Sam Adams so you could use those bottles instead... Or Leinies, or an decent micro that puts their stuff out in good bottles.

I'll go a step further.... I ferment in glass carboys. I have covers for all of them even though they sit in my dark basement. I've done other tests that confirm that even during fermentation there is a difference in taste between a batch that went straight from the kettle to the dark and a batch that sat in the kitchen overnight and got an hour of indirect morning sunlight before I carried it to the basement. My carboys ferment in complete darkness, and I dim the lights in the room any time I lift the cover to check on their progress.

I'm not trying to rag on Corona. Like I said, I like the stuff as much as I hate to admit it. But their bottles suck for the home brewer.

Keep the light out!

 

[bengerman]

to paint glass, start with a urethane-modified acrylic bonding primer (two come to minde, one is a product called UMA from a company called XIM, the other is called Stix and is made by INSL-X), then topcoat with your choice of paint within 48 hours.
normal krylon/rustoleum/etc will not adhere very well.


alernately, i've heard the screen-printed labels like on corona bottles with come off if you use muriatic acid (very fun stuff to work with; get it at a hardware store or pool supply)

 

[Germelli1]

I am actually going to do an experiment to try and get the silk screening off of rogue bottles without using deadly acids

If it works I will be sure to share!

As for me...corona bottles are exclusively used in my brewhouse for Applewine! No hops, no potential skunkage!

 

[emjay]

Actually, now that I think about it, it might be the Star San soak (also an acid) that gets it to rub off.

 

[Germelli1]

Actually, now that I think about it, it might be the Star San soak (also an acid) that gets it to rub off.

I have seen some people with success using strong concentrations of star san to remove silkscreened labels. The problem is the star san can etch the glass where print was!

 

[bengerman]

I am actually going to do an experiment to try and get the silk screening off of rogue bottles without using deadly acids

If it works I will be sure to share!

As for me...corona bottles are exclusively used in my brewhouse for Applewine! No hops, no potential skunkage!

if you go with a bench grinder, please set up a video camera first

i had a bunch of rogue bottles i was going to use, but then my friends have me cases upon cases of redhook bottles to use, so i pitched the rogues

 

[Germelli1]

if you go with a bench grinder, please set up a video camera first

i had a bunch of rogue bottles i was going to use, but then my friends have me cases upon cases of redhook bottles to use, so i pitched the rogues

Deal

I don't really need to rogue bottles since my roomate is a New Belgium addict and those labels fall off of bottles within ten minutes in a warm, weak oxyclean solutions.

The experiment is more of a "Because I can" type thing. Plus it may help out others, and single handedly save the environment by not using so much energy to recycle glass :fro:

Ok, I might have hyperbolized that last one

 

[emjay]

I have seen some people with success using strong concentrations of star san to remove silkscreened labels. The problem is the star san can etch the glass where print was!

It only looks etched. Phosphoric acid is able to cause calcium to precipitate out of solution (which is why hard water quickly turns cloudy after being mixed with Star San), and what happens is that it will deposit in a layer on the glass.

The good news is that the calcium can be removed with...(drumroll please)... acid! Including MORE Star San, as long you use it strictly to wipe off the calcium deposit and rinse, rather than leaving it to soak for a while in solution.

 

[bengerman]

Deal

I don't really need to rogue bottles since my roomate is a New Belgium addict and those labels fall off of bottles within ten minutes in a warm, weak oxyclean solutions.

The experiment is more of a "Because I can" type thing. Plus it may help out others, and single handedly save the environment by not using so much energy to recycle glass :fro:

Ok, I might have hyperbolized that last one

if you want to go the expensive route, check out products by Back To Nature. they make low-voc, no methylene chloride, non-caustic paint removers that are very slow and expensive

 

[subliminalurge]

It only looks etched. Phosphoric acid is able to cause calcium to precipitate out of solution (which is why hard water quickly turns cloudy after being mixed with Star San), and what happens is that it will deposit in a layer on the glass.

The good news is that the calcium can be removed with...(drumroll please)... acid! Including MORE Star San, as long you use it strictly to wipe off the calcium deposit and rinse, rather than leaving it to soak for a while in solution.

Hmm... I know star san isn't exactly expensive in bulk, but really wouldn't it just be more cost effective to go to the store and buy a 6-pack of something that didn't require using all this acid?

I mean, think about it. Just save the "unpresentable" bottles for your own personal use and get some better bottles from a sixer of a quality micro that you've been meaning to try....

Between Sam Adams and Leinenkiugels it's pretty easy to pick up nice bottles for a cheap price with the bonus that you get to check out an interesting seasonal beer in the process. Not to mention all of the smaller microbreweries out there.

This just seems like a crapload of work to clean off a few bottles that really don't have anything wrong with them.

 

[bengerman]

my personal bottle strategy is to reject anything that:
has decals formed into the glass
is twist off
has screen printing
requires more than an hour or so in oxyclean.

 

[subliminalurge]

my personal bottle strategy is to reject anything that:
has decals formed into the glass
is twist off
has screen printing
requires more than an hour or so in oxyclean.

That sounds pretty good.

I'm still hanging onto my Corona bottles just for the simple fact that my collection is still small enough that I'm forced to use some that I'd rather not every now and then when I run short. But they're definitely stored way in the back and designated as "just in case". As I collect more good bottles, the less desireable ones are definitely going to hit the trash. (SWMBO will be happy to see that happen. )

My ultimate goal is to not have or use any bottles that I wouldn't present to a guest. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm working toward it and in the mean time I can just stash the less desirable ones back for my own personal use.... I keep thinking I'm a six pack away from that point, but then I keep buying more gear and upping my production capacity....

I really need to either switch to kegging or quit drinking my beer so fast.... I think kegging sounds better.

 

[emjay]

Hmm... I know star san isn't exactly expensive in bulk, but really wouldn't it just be more cost effective to go to the store and buy a 6-pack of something that didn't require using all this acid?

Not really, though at the same time, you don't get anything to drink that way! However, you could say the exact same thing about painting bottles, which is why I mention it. The OP likes the shape of THESE particular bottles. I can largely identify, as a local craft brewer also screen-prints on some very uniquely-shaped *brown* bottles (for an old-fashioned look) that I absolutely love.

But as far as acids go, Star San is actually very expensive. Not expensive enough that it'd be cheaper to buy a 6-pack, but other acids can be had for a heck of a lot cheaper. CLR should work as well... hell, that's what the "C" stands for, and if it's strong enough to take the printing off, the 2nd wash is completely unnecessary. Heck, as long as you do things properly, there shouldn't be calcium depositing on the glass even with Star San.

Personally, I have a gallon jug of food-grade 75% phosphoric acid that I use for adjusting mash pH - far more than most homebrewers could ever use in a lifetime for such purposes. That's 4 times the volume of a "large" 32oz container of Star San... and I got it at 2/3 the price from my LHBS. When adjusted on an equivalent-volume basis, that makes it 6 times cheaper. To take it one step further and adjust the price based on the concentration of phosphoric acid in the solution (75% vs 50%), the product is 9 times cheaper. And the real kicker? That jug of phosphoric acid I bought is produced by the exact same company, Five Star! Now, the cost to me of removing some screen printing or calcium deposits (which I've had to remove from some items that I left for far too long in Star San) is effictively zero, since I have far more phosphoric acid than I could ever otherwise use. But even if I didn't, it'd cost peanuts to do so.

So if the OP really wants to use these bottles, it's not prohibitively expensive to use Star San, but it can definitely be done for cheaper. And the idea of painting bottles just seems iffy to me.

 

[Germelli1]

Thank you to emjay and everyone else for the food for thought!

I want to get silk screened print off of glass for a few reasons. For one "Why don't you just go out and buy a six pack...its much easier" is one of the laziest comments I have ever heard. If I have perfectly usable 22 ozers, I am going to find a way to make them work...and if not I will just bottle my personal stash in them.

Secondly, it takes TONS of energy to recycle glass. If there is a way for me to possible reuse these bottles and prevent them from going to a recycling plant, and even more so find an easy way for others to do the same, then I will find it.

 

[eloro]

Well, I tried scraping the bottles again after a week long soak in bleach with no luck.

Sometime this week I'm just going to spray paint a few either black or brown to keep out light (and cover the labels!) and then possibly paint some sort of design or name on a few of them. If it turns out good I'll have a lot more pretty bottles that keep light out... if not, I'm out the cost of a can of spraypaint... I'll post pictures if they do turn out OK.

 

[emjay]

You need to use an acid, NOT bleach

 

[MrFoodScientist]

CLR is a good solution for removing painted labels. It takes a long soak, but it will take care of your corona bottles. I know this from experience and I have pictures on my blog to prove it. I use clear bottles for soda because it shows off the colors.

Corona bottles have three layers of pad printed paint. Blue, yellow, and white, no colored glass. It takes a while to come off, but if your plan is to let them soak anyway, it's worth the time.