BeerBorg

Do you guys normally put the brew date or bottle date on your bottles, or does it matter?
Figure the best way is to put little round sticky dots on the caps with beer name and date.
Any other tips for labeling?

I like to put the ABV on the label if it is higher than normal and I am handing them out.

http://beerborg.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... &start=225

Brew date, bottle date, 4 week, 8 week, 12 week. ABV, calories, SRM, IBU, cost per 12 pack, ingredients, description, and blank space for date refrigerated (to rotate new stock). All info is in Excel, a Mailmerge with Word creates the label.

I label my boxes at first, not the individual bottles.

Then when I need to get a box empty, I find boxes with only a few bottles, and then stick a sticky dot on top and mark it.

That way I can be lazy and only label bottles I really need to.

Sometimes if I am mixing say a stout and a light beer in a box to get back a box, I will just put 2 labels on the box. It's obvious what is what.

I do the same as mashani. I put a sticky on the box with the beer type and date. When I first started, I used to make nice lables with a logo and name. Then I found out what a PITA is was to wash / remove the fancy labels.

On a side note, I have a few 2.5 gal kegs and mixed 2 up a while ago. After they carbed, I figured out which was which.

I would add the bottling date, that way you know when it was carbed. Assuming you don't leave the beer in the fermenter for too long, you will know your best by date.

Easy Trotter wrote:Do you guys normally put the brew date or bottle date on your bottles, or does it matter?
Figure the best way is to put little round sticky dots on the caps with beer name and date.
Any other tips for labeling?

I put the bottle date on it. Although that was mostly important when I didn't have a large pipeline, and didn't want to drink any to early.

I also just use the little Avery round stickers on the cap. It has just enough room if I twiddle with the font to fit the name of the brew, bottle date, and the ABV and calorie count. I started adding those last 2 just for fun, since I was looking it up on Screwy's calculator anyway.

There is a rumor on this forum that I go slightly overboard on labeling. I usually include; ABV, IBUs, hops, grains, bottling date etc. I think as mentioned above, the most important would be bottling date to gauge carb level and conditioning time. Probably ABV as well so you don't go on a bender.

I just put my beer code (SB = Saison Brett, ESB and so on) and the date bottled using a sharpie.

I tell people when I give them beers to enjoy. I need the cap info if you would like to know more about the beer after you drink it. They always come back saying "I really like that dark beer you gave me". I gave you a Porter, Stout and a Black IPA, What was on the CAP!

@Ibasterd, If I had your mad labeling skills I'd go overboard too! Love your labels.

Here is a pic that I stole from a thread that blackduck posted on. I think this should cover the necessities.

Name of beer, brew date & OG, bottling date & FG, ABV, IBU, and an interesting photo consistent with something about the beer (sometimes a photo that I took, sometimes from Internet). My avatar is the photo for "California Steamer", California Common / Steam Beer -- the photo being historical of the SS Tahoe.

Great info. Thanks all!
I picked up some dots and am using a different color for each batch so I can tell at a glance which is which. Since my kits only yield 22 12-oz. bottles, I am storing them together. Plus, it only takes a few minutes to mark them.

Also, I created an Excel spreadsheet to take notes and track my brews: brew and bottle lengths and dates, yeast, IBU, SRM, ABV, brewing notes, and tasting review. But, using the Brew Demon kits, I don't have all the ingredients. I contacted them and asked them to list the hops for each kit and they said they kicked my request upstairs, so hopefully we'll get to see those (unless it's a secret recipe).

If you use PET bottles this won't help but BB2 and I use glass and I only mark the caps on bottles that are trubie ( hey look I made a new beer word ). We will refridgerate those first for taste testing the batch.

We put different colored caps on each batch and then put all the particulars in the notes on the computer; that way I don't have to write the info for every bottle.
When I go to the beer closet I can tell which beer is which by what color cap is on what style of bottle. For example a black cap on a Sierra Nevada bottle could be our Imperial Stout and a black cap on a long neck our ESB.

We do label bottles we are giving/sending someone though.

It really depends on what information you think is important to see but you would definitely want all that info in your recipe notes in case you want to re-brew and make changes.

@Easy Trotter - I don't know if you're using any software like BeerSmith or something else but you might want to check out qBrew on ScrewyBrewer's site. It's an old program so it's free but Screwy has been maintaining the database to include the BrewDemon and Mr. Beer Extracts. This might help you fill in some of the gaps you're looking for.

It looks like the last database update was in Nov 2014 so it should be pretty close to being up to date.

Also if you use Google Drive at all there is a Template Galleryavailable. If you search for Home Brew, or Brewing, or Beer there are a lot of "Brew log" templates freely available to download and use. There are also some brewing calulators there but alway use Screwy's instead of any of these.