Beer Bottle Labels Experiment

I have decided to put labels on my bottles, at least to start with. I know this will mean some extra work, but if the beer is sufficiently good, I hope to give a good proportion of it away to friends, and family (either because they have helped to fund my new hobby, or to prove to them that home brewed beer can be very tasty).

I am already well aware of the hard work involved in removing labels, so after a little research on the web, I have decided to conduct a small experiment to judge the various techniques for sticking the labels. I will judge them on presentation and ease of removal.



As you can see I have put labels on to 6 bottles, each attached in a different way. From left to right in the picture, these labels are:

• sticker attached to a wet bottle


• sticker attached to dry bottle (the control sticker)


• sticker which has been stuck to a jumper several times to remove some of the stickyness


• sticker with addition of glue from a glue stick


• plain paper attached using glue stick


• plain paper attached with milk (tip from Jim's Homebrew forum - see my blogroll)

I will leave these for around a week before judging their appearance. I will then soak them in warm slightly soapy water and judge how easily the various labels come off.
Initial Observations:

• wet bottle sticker -looks crinkled already


• control sticker - looks great, easiest to apply


• jumper sticker - corners peeling off from where I peeled it off my jumper several times


• sticker and glue - looks great


• paper with glue stick - looks superb - best so far as paper is slightly thicker than stickers


• paper with milk - slight crinkle and messy to do - both could be avoided with careful application