Removing Painted Labels

[Donasay]

Hey everyone I am just wondering if anyone knows of a good way to remove "painted on" labels off of beer bottles. I have about 6 cases of red stripe beer bottles that I would use more often if there was a way to remove labels. I have tried some sanding, but it is time consuming, creates glass dust, and marks up the bottles pretty badly. My hope is that someone out there knows a way to get these painted labels off.


This is your opportunity to suggest caustic chemicals people... who knows of some good ones.

 

[spazzymoto]

Does paint thinners work?

 

[EdWort]

Starsan takes the paint off Stone and Corona bottles.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=32159

 

[Donasay]

Thanks Ed! I bumped your post up so people could see it. If I had known about starsan taking off paint, these bottles would have had much more circulation.

 

[Melana]

Good to know and thanks!

 

[talleymonster]

I've had a few Stone Arrogant Bastard bottles that Star San wouldn't remove. I used a dremel tool with a wire brush attachement. It worked perfect and didn't scratch the glass, and it only took a few minutes.

 

[maestro_wu]

As a follow-up to this post, since the original information is pretty useful, I recently tried a proper paint stripper with the following beer bottles:

- Sam Adams Barrel Room varieties
- Rogue (fully-painted bottles, as in the pumpkin seasonal variety)
- Rogue (standard painted bottles, with a person's face or other logo, with much of the text reversed out)

Here are my results:

- At ~15 minutes (the time indicated on the paint stripper product), the paint of the fully-painted bottle had bubbled up quite promisingly:

- The Sam Adams bottles were unchanged in appearance:

- The standard Rogue bottle appeared to show some change, but only a little:

In the end, even with washing and scrubbing under the hose, the fully-painted bottles were the only ones that showed any noticeable change. And, while most of the paint did finally come off, there was still a sticky film coating the bottles.

Additionally, since I couldn't be sure I'd washed off all of the paint stripper, I was uneasy about using them for bottling purposes.

None of the other designs/patterns I tested against showed any meaningful change at all. Interestingly, the Rogue bottles' success changed with the color of the paint. The Rogue Double (bright red with lots of logo stuff on the 'face') didn't want to clean up at all, while the orange pumpkin brew bottle cleaned up the best of the lot.

I'd still like to be able to use the Sam Adams Barrel Room bottles (they sure are nice!), but I'm thinking this chemical solution might not be the right approach.

Has anyone managed to successfully erase some/all of the marketing on that variety?

Thanks!