I would like to find out how most folks label their bottles. When I had 2 brews in the bottle, it wasn’t too hard to keep them in different bins in the garage and different parts of the fridge. As I brew more this isn’t going to be convenient.
:?:
my beer typically doesn’t last long enough, or I don’t brew frequently enough to ever need to label…that being said, when I did label, I was fond of just a small roud sticker on the cap. I personally hated trying to clean labels off bottles for reuse…just one extra step in my mind.
I guess for personal consumption the sticker on the cap makes most sense to me…but if you plan on gifting, or displaying them for a party, etc, I’ve hear people have great success with stick on mailing labels you can print on…word of caution on this, unless the printer is laserjet I believe the ink will run if the label gets wet.
I write on the cap with sharpie; no label to soak off, no stickers to apply.
I buy colored dots for really cheap and handwrite the beers name, bottling date and ABV on it. I love writing labels so that is a plus. them dots go on the cap and therefore you dont have to peel them off the bottle later.
at this point we have between 8-10 different beers in bottles, without labels i would be lost!
That’s so lame!
But it is exactly what I do too.
+1
My system works great, but won’t be necessary soon, since we are going to be kegging.
That’s so lame!
But it is exactly what I do too.[/quote]
:cheers:
I do, however make a label after each brew day. That way I can print off labels for any bottles I give away. But since I drink 99% of what I brew, I don’t apply many labels 
I keg so when I bottle it is for comps or taking with me somewhere so it is gone right away.
When I was bottling I just write on the cap
I also use the small round labels on the caps. I simply put the flavor and the bottling date. I use the Avery brand and print them out on my printer. I don’t want to have to worry about removing labels.
[quote=“n8young”]
I guess for personal consumption the sticker on the cap makes most sense to me…but if you plan on gifting, or displaying them for a party, etc, I’ve hear people have great success with stick on mailing labels you can print on…word of caution on this, unless the printer is laserjet I believe the ink will run if the label gets wet.[/quote]
I plan to use string tags tied to the neck for this reason.
Thanks everybody for the replies. I have fairly poor hand writing so I’ll probably go with one of the 1" round printer labels and do the cap thing.
gregscsr:
Thanks for the link. I really like your clear labels. I’ll probably start there.
:cheers:
[quote=“jrbarley”]Thanks everybody for the replies. I have fairly poor hand writing so I’ll probably go with one of the 1" round printer labels and do the cap thing.
gregscsr:
Thanks for the link. I really like your clear labels. I’ll probably start there.
:cheers: [/quote]
+1. That’s what I do. They are easy to put on. Don’t have to worry about peeling them off since you just pop the top and toss it in the trash. They look cool and make it easy to tell what’s what when the bottles are in cases.
I used to use the 1" round label for each bottle, but lately I have been using only about 4-5 for each batch. I write on them what beer it is and the bottle date, and then mark the label with a distinct mark - one green marker line or two parallel red marker lines - and then all of the rest of the bottles in that batch get the one, two, or cross mark with a permanent marker. Even if I have 5-6 styles, I can keep them grouped together, and the occasional label that has the name on it makes sure I know which one is which. It’s lazy, but it works.
I’ve ended up just using different colored caps for each of the brews. Currently have twelve different colored caps - not sure what I’ll do at 13! Sharpie Time? 
I used to do that, but too often I ended up having less than a full batch worth of caps. This would result in a few caps of a different color that I would have to write on. Now I buy silver caps in bulk and keep a sharpie handy.
I do silver or gold caps with a little mark from a colored sharpie on top, then I have a sheet of paper hanging in my closet with all the kinds of beer I have made listed with the color for each listed. No stickers to apply, no labels to make, just a quick dot from a marker and I’m good to go.
With this said, this is just for my wife and I, if i ever got around to giving this stuff out to my friends I would make labels just to look fancy
For my first and second brews I did the silver and gold caps. After seeing the ‘coming of BierQueens family photos’, it forced me to travel to Staples to buy some of the label dots. I’ll be writing my beer names/styles on yellow dots for at least 1000 beers to come.
That being mentioned… you and MV Sawyer will have to tell us all how the German invasion goes! Would love to hear how the homebrew stands up to days and days of drinking!
I have yet to bottle my first batch, so total noob here, but I plan on sequentially numbering my brews on the cap with a sharpie and referencing my brew log. Any gifted bottles can have access to my log book lol.
Dan
