An Idea for Labeling...

Hey all,

Long time reader, first time poster.

I had a hair-brained idea for labeling, which I'm sure has been thought of before. Regardless, I thought I would share.

It's actually more of a beer identifying technique than a beer labeling technique - no fancy art here. I'm gonna head down to Office Supply Giant and pick up some of those sheets of colored dot stickers and dot the bottle caps and the bottle crates. I'll keep a magnetic white board on my fridge, stick the colored dots all the way down and write on what beer each color signifies. That way, at least when friends open the fridge, they'll know what they're reaching for. Plus, with the caps being disposable, there's no worry about removing the colors afterwards. I dunno, it was just a thought.

Feel free to either laud this as the best idea you've ever heard, or guffaw at the probable non-originality and sheer laziness of the concept. Either would be accepted.

-E

Ya, the only worry then is with the stickers falling off. You can even order caps in different colors or designs if you want to look into that

when i bottle, i use a permanent marker to put 1-3 letters on the cap to let me know what each is.

IPA, 2PA, APA, BT (belgain tripple), BD, BG, ChS (cherry stout)... it is pretty easy, and most of the abbreviations are pretty hard to confuse.

Two even simpler and brighter ideas. Just was reading about milk as an adhesive, though, so I might abandon laziness altogether and get my Photoshop on.

Those dots will run through my printer so I just print up the label with the beer name abv ibu and bottling date. Fits easily. No need for a chart.

And yes this is much easier than putting labels on the bottle itself and then having to delabel a bottle that was a pita to delabel in the first place.

I like this idea. I also use a three-letter coding system with my caps, which has worked out well in the past. The advantage of your method is it allows you to write whatever information you want to regarding the beer on the whiteboard for your friends reference. Plus, I think the whiteboard would just be a cool addition to the refrigerator, ya know?

We did the stickers and legend method for a while. And, while it beats not labeling, here's some of the fun we've encountered:
1. running out of the proper stickers before bottles and having a mixed batch
2. Keeping a few bottles from each batch around means the legend gets awfully long
3. Erroneously thinking you've already consumed all red-dot bottles can put a hard cider in your mouth when you were expecting a Pilsner.
4. Keeping the legend on the fridge with magnets inevitably leads to it falling off and getting lost.
5. Losing stickers gives you an opportunity to play "guess the mystery brew"

They say that forewarned is forearmed. Maybe you can now avoid those pitfalls!

The guy I bought my bottles from actually did this. For normal capping I would just use a sharpie, but these were flip tops, so being able to do it over and over again was a plus.

I think I had the best idea for labeling and just keg. Its a lot easier to keep track of that way.

HawaiianHippie said:

3. Erroneously thinking you've already consumed all red-dot bottles can put a hard cider in your mouth when you were expecting a Pilsner.

Click to expand...

I have beers from maybe 30 different batches in bottles in my basement. How many colors do they make?

Thanks to a thread I read on this site, I use 3/4" round stickers I bought from an office supply store. You can go to Microsoft's website and download template 5472 then you can type in your description and print the labels. 24 stickers per sheet, so you only need to print two sheets for a 5-gal batch. With a small enough font there is enough room for more than initials. My labels read: Dark Wheat, 8/23/09, 5% Alc

Good luck.

I use these all the time now and they work out well. The ones I got from Staples were Red, Blue, Green and Yellow, so you run out of color options real quick. I need to see if I can find other colors. I thought I saw some neon colors the last time I was there, but I don't remember why I didn't pick them up.