Beer Labels

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Morrey

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I'm the first to admit I am not a bottler since I keg. If I had not discovered kegging, I think I would have ceased brewing. With that said, I occasionally find the need to bottle a beer or two here and there. I have a Blichmann beer gun to bottle from kegs.

I own a business with two graphic artists employed. We do most of our work in B/W so my printers are b/w but this is a good thing for me. I rather like the nostalgia that it brings.

So, can I find some art out there that basically allows me to drop in the name of my beer? We use Adobe Photoshop if that matters. What about the label itself? Self apply or how does this work out?

Sorry for the rookie questions, just looking into a way to keep track of a few Sours as they age or a specialty beer here and there like pumpkin ales.

Thanks!
 
I use a glue stick, Morrey - It's easy to use, holds the label on and is even easier to remove. Highly recommended.


As for the labels, I have done some good things with www.beerlabelizer.com as a base. I think some B/W nostalgic labels would be great!
 
Thank you my friend! I looked at the linked site and there are some pretty cool designs on there! What do you use as the base paper to print the labels, and do they print several up on a sheet to cut apart and apply?
 
The neat thing about the labelizer is that you can add any picture you want to many of the base designs. Once you do this, save it without adding any text; from there, you can open it in Photoshop/Whatever (I use a nice editor from Paint.Net) and add any text/font logo you want.

The procedure I use for printing would probably make a person laugh!

I simply open them up from a Windows desktop (other OS might work too, but Windows is the only one I've used for this), and choose PRINT. a screen comes on asking me what size, and I choose "wallet" size, which is the perfect size for the bottles. I tell it to print 9 labels and then (important) UN-CHECK the box that talks about fitting the picture onto the paper.

That's it - it spits them out on regular paper and I ask my wife nicely to cut them out before I glue-stick them on.

The resulting labels look good, do not run in water and come off easily. If it were any more complicated that this, I probably wouldn't do it! LOL
 
Awesome! So you just use regular paper? I have some heavier cream stock that is maybe 70 lb. I think this would be nice against the brown bottle. THANKS for the super tips!
 
70 would probably be alight, for sure - I can't think of any reason it wouldn't be...and I agree, it should be great, especially with the B/W!
 
I've heard of people using skim milk to adhere labels to bottles. I've never tried it but I hear it works well.

I usually use double sided tape if I'm going to be laminating the labels but maybe I'll give a glue stick a go. And by laminating I mean sealing the label with clear packing tape. I used to just print them out and stick them on but if you chill it and the bottle starts to sweat the toner runs all over the place. putting 2 runs of packing tape on both side prevents this and you can reuse the label. I keg now and still use my laminated labels to stick on my plain-jane tap handle.

Created labels is another fun aspect of homebrewing.
 
If you have graphic artists, why would you need stock art?

The only reservation I have is pulling them off paid assignments to make beer labels for the boss. Not sure but that may send a message that its ok to do their own personal work on my dime. Thinking out loud. TasunkaWitko pointed me in a good direction with some nice design software. I have the programs and printers readily available to make labels.
 
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