Useful Brewing Tip: Bottle Marking for Dummies

Next time you store away your bottled beer, try this technique for keeping them all organized.  It’s cheap, easy to do, and your leaves your bottles nice and clean.

Grab a package of these 3/4″ round Avery labels (#05408) at the office supply store.  There are 1008 labels in the package for about $6.

The sheet format makes it easy to mark them up on a desk first.  Writing on the bottle or cap directly always seems to end up un-readable.

I don’t usually keep more than 6-12 bottles, so multiple batches in a single case (or in the refrigerator!) don’t get mixed up.

Write the (BJCP) style number on the label and stick it to the cap of each bottle.   Attach your  brew sheets with the information about each batch inside to the front of the box.

If you don’t want to use the BJCP categories you could also use an indexing system to number each batch. For example, the year and batch number for that year.  Batch number 25 of 2008 becomes 08-25 or 2008-25.  Then make a note of the index number in your brewing software or brew log.

The labels are easy to remove when you need to send some beer in to a competition.  It also leaves no sticky mess to scrape off of the bottles when you want to re-use them later!

Tagged as: Add new tag, beer, bottle, dummies, label, marking, tips