Brewing too much

I'm wondering if I'm brewing a bit too much........... Today I cracked a brew labeled MPA 17F. Well obviously it was a pale ale, but I use a number of hops and grains that the M could stand for. 17F is the bottling date, but M could stand for Magnum, Motueka, Mosaic, or Munich.......all of which I've been using. The first sip told me what M stood for... Mosaic, but also had Munich malt... the only malt in it other than two row ..........

Light, crisp and refreshing... OG of only 1.052, IBUs 29.3, SRM 5.6.....

I've brewed 14 times so far in 2015.....This was brewed on February 5th and bottled on the 17th. My hand written tag is primarily to clue me in to what it is, and how long it's been in the bottle.... I use hand written tags .... avery labels that are 1/2" by 3/4", and virtually every brew is different. I scratch the label off when I clean the bottles. My friends look at the cryptic inscription and it means nothing to them, but I'm NOT going to make up fancy descriptive labels.

My problem is how to make labels descriptive enough yet small and simple....I could just put the brew number and date, but that would not give any information without going to the book. I have a series of brews made with Nelson and Motueka that are all reds, so the description NMR 1, NMR 2, etc... is understandable, but when I throw a C in there, it can mean quite a few different hops..... an A pretty much means Amarillo, and an H means Hallertau.

I'm about ready to hang a large dry erase board with brief descriptions, bottling date and brew number..... Perhaps I need a label printer.........

Anybody else have this problem? And how do you address it? My high frequency of brewing makes it a problem.... well an annoyance anyway. I typically have 15 or 16 half liter bottles per brew, and it's usually about 3 weeks from brew day to bottling day, and another 2-3 weeks before they are "on deck"....... My attention span isn't that long.... does that qualify as A.D.D. ;-) To make matters worse, I have a few lagers in the system, with far more delay, so they are "out of sequence"...

Oh well, it could be worse..... Like the days when beer meant Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Ranier, Lucky, Pabst, etc..... and "dark beer" meant Loenbrau or Heniken, unless you could find Blitz Bavarian Dark or Heidelberg Alt, or one of about two "ales" that seemed like paint remover compared to what we were used to..... I'm talking 60's and 70's..... When home brewing meant buying LME or hop flavored LME, light or dark, and if you were lucky you might find one or even 2 varieties of hops........ and you could technically go to jail for home brewing beer.......... But those were "the good old days" to those of us who were young then. People who were born in the 70's don't even know what "beer deprivation is"...................... coming of age in a beer lover's paradise. But they never bought pitchers of BMC p___ water beer for 50 cents either..... ;-)


H.W.

Why not a notebook? I usually print my recipe from beersmith and the write my numbers and notes on the back.

Put the abbreviations for the malt in black and the abbreviation for the hops in green. If you need that info on the bottle. Otherwise i'd make a beer sheet or your whiteboard idea. Personally, i just try to remember or i look at my brew log. Im not brewing as much as you though!

I have a similar issue. I brew 5 gallon batches 2 or 3 times per month. What I do is maintain a brew log in a spreadsheet. I track brew dates, bottle dates, ready to drink dates, yeast used, any dry hopping, recipe modifications how many bottles on hand and any bottles lent out to friends. I give each batch a number and put a small piece of avery label on the cap with the batch number. I am not into labeling either. I keep my beer in primary for a minimum of 3 weeks and bottle condition for another 3 weeks. I put bottles in the fridge 2-3 days before I will drink and they are good to go.

I have "out of sequence" beers (Saisons) too that I ferment in ambient air temps along with the 2 batches in the fermentation chamber.

Do you have a printer? You can be descriptive as you like on regular copy paper, cut out the "labels" & affix them with gelatin. I used to design mine in Illustrator & list ingredients with an image but you can just print out basic ingredients & label accordingly, no need to get fancy.

I don't label every bottle, I just put a slip of paper in the case saying what it is. If I'm going to pull a lot of beers to refrigerate and and drink, I use post-it notes. When the case gets below 10 beers or so I may label them and then combine cases, or maybe not depending how lazy I'm feeling.

I write a letter, number, or a combination on the cap. Something mnemonic usually. Then a legend to those codes, bottling date, and other worthy data in my notebook. Sometimes OG / FG / ABV if it's important.

e.g., "WS" on the cap. WS = Wheat Saison 7/2/14 in my notebook legend.
KW1 = Kwak #1 3/6/15.

All my other notes are on the back of the Beersmith brew sheet printouts. And the fronts of those are highly decorated too, with actual hop (and %AA) amounts used, etc.

Simple solution: each batch gets a 'tie on tag' that travels through the process recording batch name, OG, additions, FG readings, etc..
When bottling put stickie dot on cap.

Tiny piece of electrical tape on cap of each bottle. Blue is saison. Red is cider. Green is belgian dubbel. Black is Noel. Orange is sour. White is ambient. Put a piece of corresponding tape on your notes to remember which is which. When you brew same style take sharpie and put a dot on what remains of previous batch and notes.

jesran said:

Tiny piece of electrical tape on cap of each bottle. Blue is saison. Red is cider. Green is belgian dubbel. Black is Noel. Orange is sour. White is ambient. Put a piece of corresponding tape on your notes to remember which is which. When you brew same style take sharpie and put a dot on what remains of previous batch and notes.

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That's a good idea. I've used my wifes little neon colored dots she used to price stuff at our rummage sale.

I use diff color caps for each batch, sometimes marking up with sharpie so I know green with an x means something diff than plain green. I also try to cap with a color that makes sense to me - used yellow for a citrusy ipa, green for an English ipa - bc it's close to Ireland (yes this example is lame but it works), gold for a cider, red for an xmas ale, white for a light saison, etc.

I print labels. 6 to a sheet. Cut them out (usually several sheets thick at a time). Cut a'+' in the upper half, and push over the neck of the bottle.

I use different colors for different types of beers. You can put as much information on them as you like.

I tried printing smaller labels and sticking them to bottles. I found a glue stick to work well, and come off easy. But it was more effort than pushing labels over the neck.

Brewing too much.... Is there such a thing?

A simple solution would be to assign your beers a 2 letter "code" going forward today. The first beer would be AA, second would be AB, third AC. This would go on until you got to AZ at which point you would switch to BA, BB, BC, and so on. Keep track of all your recipes in a notebook and assign a code to each one. This will allow you to assign an easy 2 digit code to 676 unique recipes.

You can use write the 2 letter code on the top of each bottle. If you happen to forget what the bottle is you will be able to reference your recipe notebook. If you are brewing ~1.5 beers a week (15 brews over 10 weeks of this new year) this system would allow you to brew unique beers at this rate for over 8 years. You will probably run out of recipes before you run out of unique codes!

I'm confused just reading this. I guess that is why I keg my beer.

Has anyone else noticed how conflicted the OP seems to be?

I mean, he starts one thread after another seemingly for the rest of us to share his indecision and angst.

I don't get it...

Cheers!

I label the caps "YEAR.XX" with a Sharpie. Year = year and XX = batch number. Put a piece of paper on the beer fridge that notes what each batch is or just refer back to notes.

day_trippr said:

[...] I don't get it...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

... I get it ... I think ....... maybe not..........

antony said:

Do you have a printer? You can be descriptive as you like on regular copy paper, cut out the "labels" & affix them with gelatin. I used to design mine in Illustrator & list ingredients with an image but you can just print out basic ingredients & label accordingly, no need to get fancy.

Click to expand...

I like that.... gelatin.... What's the process...........anything to get away from the glue on normal labels which is difficult to remove........ I use swing top bottles exclusively so I don't have the throw away caps most people do. This thread has generated a bunch of excellent innovative ideas..... I like the glue stick, and the plus symbol cut in the label for simplicity. A spreadsheet makes sense to me as I already have batch numbers..... Perhaps two whiteboards, each with as spreadsheet.... One above the other. When I run out of space I can erase one and move it to the top........ The larger labels done on the printer would make it simple to have a much more descriptive label, the spreadsheet a reference for details on the wall... grains, hops, IBUs, etc..... Batch number, description, and bottling date would go on the label.

Thanks for all the great ideas....... I know it sounds a bit silly to be having this problem.....but obviously I'm not alone.



H.W.

I just keep a notebook. In the front is a brew log that lists the name of the brew, date and cap code. I use multiple colored caps with some kind of letter or symbol on the top. Then it is easy to consult the log and see what is in the bottle. If I want more info I just go to the recipe that is also in the notebook.qq

I use a notebook with recipe and brewing notes. Each brew gets a number (1,2,3, etc) and I write the number on each bottle cap w/ a sharpie. ezpz

Owly055 said:

I like that.... gelatin.... What's the process...........anything to get away from the glue on normal labels which is difficult to remove.

Click to expand...

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f46/use-knox-its-best-label-adhesive-354082/

I found this to be the easiest way to adhere labels.

antony said:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f46/use-knox-its-best-label-adhesive-354082/

I found this to be the easiest way to adhere labels.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the great link.......... The answer to my prayers... well maybe not prayers actually. The only printer I own is a laser, so it's perfect for the job. I can set up a template and generate labels from it. 2" x 2.75"... Plenty of room for a good label. 16 to a sheet of copier paper. My brews usually yield 16 half liter bottles.

H.W.

I used to have the batch number tied into cellphone. That worked good until I broke my phone and lost all my notes.

I also think kegging is a good idea. Beersmith is a great idea.

Owly055 said:

I'm wondering if I'm brewing a bit too much...........

H.W.

Click to expand...

Last year I had 105 Gallons of beer in the house at one time.... I provided about 40 gallons to parties I went to (three or four) and then my two pints a day,,, and my Brother in laws two pints a day... we went trough it pretty fast.

DPB

I keep a notebook with every recipe numbered sequentially.....when a batch is bottled, batch number gets written on the cap with a Sharpie...it ain't rocket science to keep track of, no matter how much/often you brew.

I used to label my bottles with a "B" on the cap. It stood for "beer". After a few years I stopped doing this because I realized if it was in a beer bottle it was probably beer.

I don't brew anywhere near as much as you do. I've only brewed 3 times in 2015 so far, but the way I handle labeling is: I don't label individual bottles, but I do put a post-it on each cardboard box of beer with information about the beers in that box written on it. I always include: the beer name that I've given it, the ABV, an IBU estimate (which I usually only put on my pale ales and IPAs, but sometimes on other beers as well), and if I want to, occasionally the grains and hops used (in case I think I might have trouble remembering). I also ALWAYS write the date I bottled the beer too.

For example, one of my labels says:
"Prince of Darkness Chocolate Vanilla Stout
4.9% ABV
40 IBU
Bottled on 8/27/2014"

I didn't list grain or hops there because I remember what they are (even though I brewed it 7-8 months ago), but if I brewed as often as you did, I would write that info down for every beer too.

A more detailed label would be:
"Citra Blast IPA
6.1% ABV
60 IBU
Pilsner, Crystal 15L, White Wheat
Bottles on 2/14/2015"

Since the hops are in the name, I had no need to write the hops elsewhere above. I like this method because it only takes a few seconds to make two labels (one five gallon batch for me almost always means two cardboard boxes) and I never mistake what I made.

I print the batch number on a half inch round label and place it on the cap when I bottle.

grathan said:

I used to have the batch number tied into cellphone. That worked good until I broke my phone and lost all my notes.

I also think kegging is a good idea. Beersmith is a great idea.

Click to expand...

I use Brewer's Friend..... I find the Ipad version of Beersmith frustrating and unusable for the way I brew......... too "connect the dots" for me. I like to craft my brews the other way around....... Silly I guess, but it's my way. I print every brew out, and they're all in a notebook. Good descriptive labels would be desirable anyway for when I hand a friend an assorted sixpack to take home....... At least he can say.... "I really like the beers with Hallertau.... or Nelson Sauvin, or Mosaic, or Hallertau.... etc", or "70 IBUs is a bit too bitter for me" .................

H.W.

Sticky dot number on the bottle. Brew number. Recipe and details in a note book.

Look up the number and you know exactly what it is....

I buy round stickers from dollar tree. These will come with several hundred in a pack and are multiple colors. Some will have dollar values from a garage sale idea. Very easy to just peel and stick.