Crown cap bottle labels

For me, labelling up my brews is something I always think about doing, and have designed labels on websites such as beer labalizer, but never get around to. This is mainly because of two reasons ~ the first is that they use a lot of paper, and thus ink, so can work out surprisingly expensive to print on an inkjet printer ~ at 4 labels per A4 sheet, your looking at 10 or so pages of full colour printing for a full brew length. The second reason is that after agonisingly removing the commercial labels from my bottles, it's quite nice not to have to do that again. Ever. The solution came by way of this thread on the home brew forum.

The idea is to print circular labels that are the correct size to be stuck onto the crown cap of your bottles. You can get a full brew length's worth on a single sheet of A4, and you throw away the thing they are stuck to when you drink the beer, so the bottles remain label free. Additionally, what is in the bottle is easily identifiable from above, which is useful if they are in a crate or low shelf.

Here's how I did it;

1. Design and print the labels

I use Ubuntu Linux on my laptop, so I had access to 'gLabels'. This allows me to design and print a sheet of 24mm round labels using the 'Endisch 6500024x' template for 24mm round labels . Obviously, on a 24mm round label, you are limited as to the amount of text you can fit in, but I have found that I can easily fit the batch number, beer type and bottling date on them. This is all I need when deciding what to drink, the rest is in my brewing notes and can be found using the batch number.

2. Print out a sheet of labels and 'punch' them out

To do this, you need a 1'' or 25mm punch. These are available from hobbycraft, and various other places. I received this one as a Christmas present from the kids ~ it creates labels with a patterned edge (much like a crown caps!) but they are also available as normal circles. They aren't overly expensive ( a few quid) if you shop around. Its the orange thing in this photo. Lining up the punch with the circular labels is easier if you hold the punch upside down, and you can then see when the paper is aligned. It's easier to do than explain. You may also need to trim off the non printer top of the paper with scissors so that the punch can 'reach' the first line of labels, but once you have done this you can punch away.

3. Glue them on.

I used craft PVA diluted in water ~ just a tiny amount of PVA in a fair amount of water to get a liquid with a consistency similar to milk. I then painted this liquid liberally onto the top of the battle cap, placed a label on, and pressed it down. That's it!