I was looking to put labels on my beer bottles so they looked good. If you are looking for a good resource to print free beer bottle labels, check out the link below. there were a handful of posts but none seemed to bring everything together. See below link:
A new site www.DIYFreeBeerLabels.com lets you print free beer bottle labels at home via PDF. it can be printed on regular paper. Some good tips to stick the label to a bottle: use 2% milk and wipe it on the paper. it sticks really well and will remove easily. much better than a sticky back label.
The labels take a little more time to put on but after spending so much time on the brew, its worth it. the labels help bring a boring brown bottle to life.
I think there is a devolution in home brewing. At first its all about the name of your beer and a cool label idea. You eventually quit making labels (usually about the time the beer starts getting drinkable), and eventually you even quit naming them. I call my two best beers Scottish and APA. I might throw a name on something im experimenting on, like James’ Brown or Bing Quadsby. My labels are a peice of blue painters tape on the keg handle.
+1 - I was so into designing labels when I first started brewing. Now I don’t even bother giving them funny names in my recipe software, because I can never remember whether “Fizzy Yellow”, “Kraut Pee”, “Skunk Pee” or “Asparagus Pee” was the version of light lager that I actually wanted to brew.
I will label bottles if I am planning to hang on to them for a long time or give them away. Even then, not creative names, just style appropriate artwork that is often a mono-tone image with tone on tone text.
It is a funny perspective. When I started last year, my gurlfriend( the creative half of our pair) said she found some labels she wanted to buy for me. I turned them down, as even a year later most of my batches are simply named by style. Every bottle of IPA gets IPA sharpied on the bottle cap. I have named one beer: it was a clone of a local favorite called “Chickow” from ferris Bueller. I named mine “trust me, I’m a professional.” Her favorite brew of mine so far(original is her/out favorite local beer
Back when I bottled every batch, they all got labels. I had gotten to the point where different cap types and/or markings on the caps stopped making sense. You had no certainty of what you were opening. I had case upon case of beer in the basement. No kids and I was brewing at a furious pace.
Now I keg. I brew the same handful of recipes repeatedly. Tape with name, date, OG, and FG and that’s it.
I will still print labels if I’m bottling for a gift, but that’s about it.
beerlabelizer.com is another site like the one you mention. I think the labels here are better. I especially like the one with the ‘Biohazard’ symbol, but I would have to use it for all my beers. Most of the labels here require ‘membership’, however, it’s only $5 and that’s good forever. On the downside, when you print the labels, it eats up your ink. If I do label anything anymore, I use a spreadsheet I have pre-formatted. Plain black and white, I do a find and replace on each field I need to change and then I print out 12 labels per page.
I name them, but just as often as not, it’s a simple name or a joke. I presently have on tap: “Into the Boards”, a Czech lager I brewed when the hockey playoffs were underway; “Redheaded Stepchild”, a red ale; “Not as Bitter”, an English bitter, and “Ed’s Smoked Honey Wheat”, a recipe using those ingredients by the owner of my LHBS that took a silver at NHC a few years back. But as to labels - the blue tape route is what I use on my kegs. Even then, it is just so I can tell them apart before loading them into the serving fridge. I use dry erase magnetic strips to label the taps on the fridge…all that said, I appreciate the talents of those who design some outstanding labels.
I designed three or four labels but never got around to labeling bottles because putting labels on means taking them back off. I have named all of my beers minus my solera pulls, which are just labeled as “lambic soler year” and the year of the pull. I have never named the handful of ciders and meads I have done over the years. I am running out of fun names for my beers.
My mother in law has been cleaning out her parents’ house after they passed away and offered me a 1930s hand-operated mimeograph designed to make postal card-sized forms, ads, etc. I am planning on using it to make very basic black and white labels for some of my beers I want to keep for years. I don’t know if I will ever get around to actually doing it but it would have a clean look and a cool story behind it.
I attach any labels with milk. As soon as I pour one, I thoroughly rinse the bottle to clear out the yeast. While they’re sitting under the faucet, the hot water will loosen the label. Then it’s just a matter of wiping the bottle off where the label was.
I have a standard “Brick Pig Brew” label, black logo & text on white background. At the bottom there’s a space for the name (usually just a style, but sometimes I come up with something more creative), and below that another space for the date. As someone above said, I use a find & replace function to do the name & date. The label is laid out to print 9 per page. I stick 'em with milk. Takes me about an hour to label a batch, including cleanup. Time well spent, as far as I’m concerned.