Show Us Your Label

Fantastic

 

I was hoping it was a hirsute brunette lady

 

Made a simple SMASH IPA to accompany terrible b-movies. ABV, style and other information is on the other side. The label is a homage to Robo Vampire and is tied around the neck of the bottle with a string.

 

I use QR codes that link to the recipe on Beersmithrecipes.com but you could link them to your blog or anything.

 

I used to have two on mine, one would link to the recipe. Now I just have one that when you scan it, it goes to the check in for it on Untappd.
(Both titles or pics are puns that would only be known to people pretty familiar with Japanese creatures)


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I just started to label my homebrew… First was an Oktoberfest that just finished:



And this is my upcoming Krampus label that I am bottling today:



I am going to do some minor tweaks on the Krampus label, probably just the decant/bottle conditioning note if not remove it all-together and add some other information instead.

I am keeping my labels primarily white and simple so I am not wasting a ton of ink to print them… Really love the milk/paper labels, they pop right off in cleaning solution. So nice…

 

Huge fan of Krampus, and the label. I need to come up with a black&white design. Even on our plotters at work, the dark/heavy labels just don't read well.

Nice job man.

edit: personally not a fan of 'how to pour' notes on labels... friends think its pretentious and family gets worried about not doing it right. now i just put city/state/bottle date on them and call it finished.

 

Thanks, appreciate it!

Yeah, I agree... I gave a bottle to someone yesterday who read the pour notes and they were like "If I can only pour half my beer I will only get two sips!". Once I told them it was leave a 1/2 INCH, made a bit more sense... But right then and there I thought the same thing, remove it.

So I will eliminate that and just put some other info on there... Beer description, the story behind the name, etc... I will figure something out!

 

Your walking in front, and hands where we can see em.

 

Labels i have been playing around with. It's getting made for a freind who has his hobbie doing a YouTube show.
Got the ingredients to set it away when I get a day off work.
Been fun making the labels hoping the marzipan stout turns out well

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Experimental batch.

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My bigger beers that were worthy of labels.
We name the good ones after our dogs or their nicknames.

 

There great

 

My 2c, give the dog his/her neck back on the first label

 

Our 32oz pet bottles go out like this:

 

New Cider label

 

easy fix

 

Just made me chuckle - headless dog

 

A over all I appriciate the old timey feel of this label, but I have to tell you I had to look, um hard to see that the one guy was giving the man in the moon a drink.

 

Had to fix my label. The previous one was much too dark, the text was unreadable. Unfortunate, I liked the other one on the screen. I definitely need to tone them down to a simple black and white logo or something.

 

Very nice, I like the stylized design a lot.

 

Those look great I really like the warning

 

Though the Warning is True....

 

Been holding off on sharing these till I knew they would be used. These are for an inherited partial mash kit a friend gave me. The grain bill was unknown (which gave me the name), the yeast had to be replaced with Notty, and I adjusted the hop schedule and dry-hopping (+50g Cascade) to fit my tastes in an American IPA. Bottled last week and it's spot on ....

 

Zoinks!

 

These really turned out well! Good use of accent colors on the side and I especially like the "Mystery Malt" in the Scooby Doo font. Nice work!

 

This is the label I came up with to be used with my IPA I am bottling this weekend... I used some home grown Cascade and Chinook for the dry hop (along with some Mosaic and Simcoe).

It is the first IPA I have brewed that I adjusted the water profile for, did a first wort hopping, hop stand at 160-170F and oxygenate with pure O2... The result? Based on the hydro sample before the dry hopping, really damn impressive. Far more flavor and hop "juiciness", it's wonderful. The aroma coming out of the air-lock post dry hop smells incredible as well. I will have another taste this weekend when bottled..

 

Isn't the anticipation after trying new techniques or recipe additions amazing?
Nice clean label dude.

 

That's all I use for the creation. Then I export to MSword to size it for label printing.

edit: oh, spray a little clear on it to preserve the ink.

 

Love these and also like someone else said the accent colors on the side look great!

 

The brews i am going to try next month got the grains just need the time off

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Those look professional as hell. Awesome job. Angry Irish one is excellent.

 

I know I've said it before, but you really got everything right with these. The Angry Irish one is perfect. Very professional and just a pleasure on the eyes!

 

Finally had time to make another label! At this rate, it's going to take me forever to make labels for everything I've brewed...

 

So I've been watching this thread for a while and obviously others watching it are into designing a good label for their beers. But it's really easy to get caught in your first style of label and just repeat it, I know I do that.

But I'm curious, to all of you that are into labels; what makes a great label in your mind? Is it the evocation of the beer style that the asthetics create? Is it the name? Is is the colors? The simplicity? The way the information is laid out? And what information is important? I see many labels with warning on them but that seems unnecessary on a homebrew label (unless they are a play on it) but do you guys dig it? I wanna kinda deconstruct labels and get everyone's thoughts and help us all take our labels up a notch.

Also, please don't just say it's a balance of those, of course the perfect balance makes the perfect label, but I'm curious what helps that balance.

Thanks!

 

Of course this is all going to be personal thoughts and opinion but here's my thoughts.

Before I was into home brewing a co-worker used to share home brewed cider. The bottles he gave me didn't have any label, so they sat in my fridge for quite some time before trying them to be honest. I started thinking about the reason behind this when I started brewing myself. I quickly realized I was hesitant to try something I wasn't very sure exactly what it was. Was it dirty water, was it going to be good, was it going to be sanitary? What exactly is in this bottle, maybe I'm not in the mood that day to try that. To me a label completely changes the way someone looks at that beer when they're first trying it.

It is my thought that the more appealing it looks and the more "store bought" it looks the more someone is going to WANT to try it and psychologically they may even end up liking and enjoying it more because of it. This is the only reason I put government warnings, barcodes, a made up brewery name, etc.

That is beside the fact that I love playing in Photoshop and it is a part of the hobby I enjoy very much while sitting around twiddling my thumbs while beer is fermenting. It gives me something brew related to do all of the time.

 

Perfect, what I take from that is tip #1 make it look professional. So many homebrewers don't bother to use labels, but I was a bartender/waiter for 8 years and one thing I learned is that the first thing you eat with is your eyes. Make it look professional, 1: put a label on every beer. If it's worth making it is worth labeling. 2: if you are going to label it put the same trouble into labeling as you did into making it. We don't just throw random hops and malts together and hope it works so don't just throw random images together. Plan it, think about how the images interact with each other. Just like the recipe you created realize that every color and image interacts with each other. Put time and thought into it. Don't just toss it together and use the first draft.

Great, thanks! Keep em coming. I really want to dig deep into this and help us understand how to make every aspect of our beers better.

If I get enough tips together from everyone I will put together some sort of manifesto that will help us all about designing the perfect label and really kick our hobby up a notch

 

I think this is a great discussion to add so thanks for asking. I was actually approached to see if I was interested in writing an article and this is the first idea that came to mind was home brewing labels.

This will help add to the creativity.