Ok... Do any of y'all make or have labels for your bottled beer??
Here are just a few of my labels below. I don't make a label for every beer, but sometimes when I feel like it I will. As you can see I made a template in photoshop. It took some time to make the template but once I made it, adding the artwork for a different beer each time is pretty simple. Sometimes I don't even do artwork but just do plain black labels on a white background in the center of my template. I started using some generic label making websites online, kinda the free stuff, but wasn't happy with the selection.
You can print your labels on regular paper and use milk and a cue-tip to make them stick to the bottle. After your done, they come off with water VERY easy. I've also bought label stock and printed them onto that, takes more time to stick them on and you'll have to soak them like commercial labels (although not as hard to get off) to remove them. Sometimes I will shrink the label size down to save time and paper and make it about 1x2 inches on the bottle.
If your designing you own label the tricky part is making sure your labels end up being printed in the right size. Have to make sure they aren't stretched or anything wacky. In photoshop I set the size of the project in inches so I wouldn't have this problem. I let windows default printing (whatever you call it) handle my printing (and NOT photoshop) and it's simple. I set the number of items per page and uncheck the box that says something like "fit to page".
The hardest part of this process is cutting the darn things out. You'll want to invest in either a good comfortable pair of siccsors or one of those paper cutters with the handle. If you download/design a label with a rounded edge it REALLY sucks to cut them out.
There are plenty of other ways that you can use to identify your beer. Bob's method with the sticky labels for the caps works good. You can tape them, use funky caps for different batches like American flags or pink ones. You can even make a mark with marker on the cap; I used to do shapes. So the Canadian Pale Ale was a star, the porter was a circle....you get the idea.
There are a lot of other ways to zazz up your bottle presentation too. You can use corks instead of caps (at your own risk). You can leave the corks sticking part of the way up on things that aren't carbonated. You can cap or cork, then dip the top in wax, then use a stencil of some sort to put a mark in the wax. You can also buy shrink wrap capsules for the top of your bottles, just dip them in boiling water for about 1-2 seconds and they shrink right up around the cap/cork and neck of your bottle.
For me the labels is just kind of for fun, I only do it every once in a while, like on a batch I'm really proud of or that I'm going to be giving away a lot of.
If you want to learn how to make your own templates with photoshop, give me a shout I can hook you up with EVERYTHING you need to learn photoshop. You can use MS Paint too, and, well other various similar software.
As you can see I'm not an artistic type, but I have fun trying!
