nutty_gnome
Well-Known Member
For years I have been using the staples/avery sheets of 3/4 inch round labels to ID my beer. They are easy to print on the laser printer and can hold all the info I need when the time comes to choose which beer to put in the fridge or cooler. The laser printer ink is permanent so condensation and/or ice chests do not cause the labels to smear. I understand ink jet ink is another matter but have no experience with it.
Anyway, all of this has been documented on these forums before.
I wanted to tell you guys two things:
First: in my baseent, all of the white labels with black ink look the same until you actually start reading the labels. You need to understand that last year I had 10 different beers spread over 14 different cases at one point. So I didn't want to read every darn cap that I came across! So the solution for me was to print the round labels and while the labels were still in the sheet, color over the printed label with fat highlighters. So then the labels would be green, blue, red, yellow, pink, whatever. You could also do multi color ones without much more effort. This made 'archiving and retrieving' beer a trivial task because they were all color coded. Try it, you'll like it.
Second: I got tired of using the highlighters and coming up with color schemes. My lazy brain started to think: "What if you could by pre-colored labels without getting too many of one color?"
So, one day I started looking online for a place that will sell colored 3/4 inch round labels by the sheet. Google instantly brought up www.labelsbythesheet.com !!!
I looked and they have perhaps 25 different colors for 3/4 inch round labels on 8.5 by 11 inch sheets. There are 108 lables per sheet so each sheet is good for 2 5 gallon batches. The cost of each sheet depends upon color or finish but were as low as 64 cents for any color to as much as 89 cents for the gold and silver foil sheets. Shipping was reasonable via USPS. I bought 15 sheets of 10 different colors (including the gold and silver foils) for ~15 bucks shipped. Ordered on a thursday and had them in my hand on a monday and they look great. No more highlighters for me,
Now, some colors are not as useful as others. Obviously black laser ink does not show well on dark colors. But if you stick with the pastels and some of the flourescents you will be fine. The free template they provide also works well. Anyway, if you are like me and like the simplicity of labeliing the caps of your beer so that you don't have to worry about unsticking labels every time you re-bottle try this. It works well and they look good too.
www.labelsbythesheet.com
N_G
Anyway, all of this has been documented on these forums before.
I wanted to tell you guys two things:
First: in my baseent, all of the white labels with black ink look the same until you actually start reading the labels. You need to understand that last year I had 10 different beers spread over 14 different cases at one point. So I didn't want to read every darn cap that I came across! So the solution for me was to print the round labels and while the labels were still in the sheet, color over the printed label with fat highlighters. So then the labels would be green, blue, red, yellow, pink, whatever. You could also do multi color ones without much more effort. This made 'archiving and retrieving' beer a trivial task because they were all color coded. Try it, you'll like it.
Second: I got tired of using the highlighters and coming up with color schemes. My lazy brain started to think: "What if you could by pre-colored labels without getting too many of one color?"
So, one day I started looking online for a place that will sell colored 3/4 inch round labels by the sheet. Google instantly brought up www.labelsbythesheet.com !!!
I looked and they have perhaps 25 different colors for 3/4 inch round labels on 8.5 by 11 inch sheets. There are 108 lables per sheet so each sheet is good for 2 5 gallon batches. The cost of each sheet depends upon color or finish but were as low as 64 cents for any color to as much as 89 cents for the gold and silver foil sheets. Shipping was reasonable via USPS. I bought 15 sheets of 10 different colors (including the gold and silver foils) for ~15 bucks shipped. Ordered on a thursday and had them in my hand on a monday and they look great. No more highlighters for me,
Now, some colors are not as useful as others. Obviously black laser ink does not show well on dark colors. But if you stick with the pastels and some of the flourescents you will be fine. The free template they provide also works well. Anyway, if you are like me and like the simplicity of labeliing the caps of your beer so that you don't have to worry about unsticking labels every time you re-bottle try this. It works well and they look good too.
www.labelsbythesheet.com
N_G