Labelling, logging your brews

Forums › Home brewing (beer, wine, spirits) › Labelling, logging your brews

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek

#284282 12-Apr-2021 08:01

We all should be recording what was done and the recipe for each brew.

Im about to bottle my next 2 brews, and normally, I use a marker pen to write on bottle date it was put down. Then I thought about using Avery labels from an OpenOffice sheet, with the label includes date and automatic reference from first cell to end of page so you only enter on one cell. It would be nice to give even PET bottles a personal touch.

There are a bunch of home brew apps on play.google, but they go into temperatures and much more detail possibly suits the experts here, but most dont fit for me.

Any comments or innovative ideas welcome.

CruciasNZ

864 posts

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Trusted

#2691220 12-Apr-2021 10:02

I store them on separate shelves, with the shelves labelled. I've been meaning to get round to tagging them in some way; probably four colours of elastic band would be sufficient since I rotate a beer and a cider, so I can have the two brews plus stragglers for each of them.

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BlueShift

1632 posts

Uber Geek

#2691223 12-Apr-2021 10:06

I go old(ish) school, a small round label on the lid with the number of the brew scrawled with a vivid marker, and all the brew details in my wee notebook.

As I work in IT, and spend too many hours a day stuck to a PC, brewing is my offline, analogue hobby. I can see the attraction in whizzing off some pretty labels from a brew database, but its one of the few times I use an actual pen to write down more than two words in a row...

Gurezaemon

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#2691227 12-Apr-2021 10:18

BlueShift:

I go old(ish) school, a small round label on the lid with the number of the brew scrawled with a vivid marker, and all the brew details in my wee notebook.

As I work in IT, and spend too many hours a day stuck to a PC, brewing is my offline, analogue hobby. I can see the attraction in whizzing off some pretty labels from a brew database, but its one of the few times I use an actual pen to write down more than two words in a row...

Ditto here. Round stickers from the $2 shop on the caps of the bottles, with bits of the labels holding my notes on the fridge so I know what's what.

I'm too lazy to take notes, so when I put a brew down, I snap a pic of the kit, yeast, and anything else I put in it. I kinda like the low-tech nature of it. If I really need to figure out dates, I can go and find the photo on the phone, but I've never really felt the need to be honest.

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jpoc

1034 posts

Uber Geek

#2691770 12-Apr-2021 21:42

Life is too short to put labels on bottles. :)

I put my bottles into cardboard boxes and then stick a post it note onto the box.

If I buy bottles from the home-brew shop, I get the packs of 15 (branded mangrove jacks). They come in boxes that work fine for storing 15 bottles and one batch takes exactly 2 boxes for 30 750ml bottles.

You can stack them just fine up to at least 4 high.

I also use the boxes that are used for Krombacher beer from Countdown.

From the shop, they come with 12 660ml bottles. You can fit 12 750ml PET bottles but the plastic bottles are shorter than the glass ones so you cannot stack them.

If you wash a couple of the glass bottles then you can fit 10 PET bottles and 2 empty glass bottles in one box. Three boxes for for one batch of brew and the strength of the glass bottles means that you can stack those 4 high as well.

So just one post it note per box is enough.

I normally have just one brew in the fridge for serving so I know what they are.

If I have a mix in the fridge I write on the bottles with chalk pen as required.

The chalk pen is great for marking the bottles and it just washes off when I am cleaning the used bottles for the next brew.

hsvhel

813 posts

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#2691777 12-Apr-2021 22:01

mine go into a 50ltr tub in stacks with the dates and brew on masking tape

ageorge

626 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2691883 13-Apr-2021 08:13

//The chalk pen is great for marking the bottles and it just washes off when I am cleaning the used bottles for the next brew.

Great idea.

I searched for a better logging method. My OS is Linux. I found there were two programs both of which did not fit for me.

On play.google I found this free app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=brewtracker.is.ccahill.com.au.brewtracker

Which fits my bill perfectly, and in fact it exports and imports from csv files, so if you wanted to put your previous brews in app you can by entering your data into spreadsheet.

There are many other apps but these were too convoluted for my needs.

Al.

Gurezaemon

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#2700630 2-May-2021 09:57

I've been making some lovely brews recently, and so thought I should take a few more notes than what I have been doing, and the Brewtracker mentioned above is a really nice little app that does exactly what it says on the tin. Highly recommended.

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