Create beer bottle labels

I never really cared about adding labels to my beers…until I did and that was awesome!

Creativity is endless and labels really add a personal touch to your beers

At first, I thought about making oval labels, but I quickly realized square/rectangle are more convenient, both to print and cut and in terms of available space

This is a template I created for Adobe Illustrator, it already includes a name, beer style and various information such as ingredients, street address and Best before date

Plain white paper from your printer gives a surprisingly smart result

Also experiment with Kraft paper, which is my favorite

Here are some examples

Make sure to use a laser printer and not an inkjet, so the ink won’t run when labels get wet in the cooler

If you add trim marks in Illustrator->Print->Marks and Bleed->Trim Marks and use a Paper Trimmer like this one you can make many labels in no time

The typical size is when the label covers about half of the circumference of the bottle, roughly 3.5″ x 3.5″ for 12oz bottles (9.5cm wide x 8.5cm high for European 33cl bottles)
You can fit up to 6 labels per page if you stick them together

If you want to add more text, you can make labels that wrap almost all around the bottles and have a vertical rectangle on one side for example, just leave about ½” (1 cm), so that both ends don’t overlap

You can remain quite traditional, with just the name of your beer, style, ingredients, ABV, content volume and so on, but it’s a lot more fun to really unleash your imagination and create funky designs, check this out

Really, the sky is the limit and you’ll be amazed how labels can enhance your beers

How to stick beer bottle labels

A long time brewer’s favorite, milk works perfectly and you always have some at hand
It sticks like hell when dry and it’s super easy to remove with some water

Make sure to use whole milk as skimmed milk won’t stick enough
For best results, you don’t need to soak labels in milk, just apply some on the back with a brush and you’ll be fine

To remove labels, just run them under water

More details in this excellent tutorial

If you get a little more serious and want to improvise a cheap label gluer, try this

Or more simply