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Labelling bottles

Northern Brewer General
#1

As I start brewing more often I am noticing I’m brewing faster than I can drink. Which is not a problem at all but the issue I’m having is coming up with a way to tell my beers apart while in bottles and storing.

I have a really large plastic container that holds about 48 bottles while they are conditioning so this is simple enough. My other bottles are in boxes (usually around 20-24 per box). Right now I have memorized which beer is in which box but as I start brewing more I can see this becoming a problem, not to mention I would eventually like to be able to consolidate boxes and have different beers in the same box as well as aging a 6pack or two from each batch.

Does anyone have a creative and simple way of keeping things in order so when storing beer i can easily keep track of what’s what?

#2

I use the little round labels you’d buy for a yard sale, and stick them on the caps. They come in three or four colors, so I both color code and also write an abbreviated name on them.

#3

sharpie with abbreviation of beer name/style on the crown (i only use o2-absorbing, which are silver)

#4

Same as the others only I bought a ton of different colored caps to help differentiate beers. If I were still bottling I’d make up a simple label using the mini labels over at
http://www.grogtag.com/more-homebrew-stuff
Caps work fine but often I’ll be samples out of a bomber and once the cap is off is hard to tell beers apart.

#5

I usually write an abbreviation on the cap with a sharpie. You could get creative and start designing your own labels to stick on the bottle. I never got into that.

#6

This is me exactly. Sharpie and o2-absorbing silver caps.

#7

I’ve done just about everything over the years. Printed out cool labels with my picture on it. Spray painted different colors on the caps after the beer had been bottles - looked super pro.

Small round stickers work great as mentioned above.

I also like doing sheets of 30 Avery “paper type” labels. Easy to print out basic info like type of beer / date etc.

#8

Sure writing on the caps is fine, but why not just write it on the bottle itself?

That’s what I do! I got a silver sharpie and just write the beer, and bottling date on each one. Plus it looks tits!

Easy to clean off with a lil oxyclean. I’ve even soaked bottles in oxyclean for a couple days in my beer aquarium and it has automatically removed the sharpie.

#9

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#10

My procedure has always been to write the batch number on the bottle cap with a Sharpie. If I give bottles away, I tell the recipient to just look it up on Untappd if they forget what the number indicates.

#11
#12

Epic.

Did your bottles blow up at night too?

#13

I don’t like cleaning labels from bottles. I get packs of return address label stickers (80 per sheet - such as you’d see stuck on the upper left on an envelope), then print the brew and date twice on each label. Cut in half (160 labels) and apply to the cap. You can do half a sheet, then turn over and feed into printer the other way for the next brew.

Looks something like this

#14

I like this method. It is gimmicky but it works since almost everybody has a smartphone now.

(http://delivrDOTCOM/QR-Code-Generator)

Set the code type to text and you’d be amazed how many characters you can fit on a beer cap. I use the Avery labels and their online wizard to set em up. copy and paste the qr code and print. My friends can’t resist using google goggles to figure out which beer it is and they even share it on social media. It’s a PITA if you have a lot of different ones cellared but it is neat for get-togethers.

#15

[quote=“tom sawyer”]I use the little round labels you’d buy for a yard sale, and stick them on the caps. They come in three or four colors, so I both color code and also write an abbreviated name on them.[/quote]This is my favorite way because the label disappears when you open it. My other way (for show) is the self adhesive 6/page labels and a color laser printer. That’s for beers which are supposed to look good.

#16

I write the number of the batch on the bottle cap with a sharpie. I also keep a list of names that associate with the numbers beside it.

#17

Yeah, nothing beats a sharpie for quick labeling. I have about two cases worth of mixed brews right now and a quick look at the bottle caps at the top of the cases I can tell “BA” is brown ale, “I” is IPA, “RA” is red ale & “B” is belgian pale.

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