The Label Experiment Results - Part 1: Appearance

It has been over a week since I started the label experiment so its time to find out the results. In this post I will order the labels by appearance, in reverse order:

Appearance:

6th: Sticker pressed on jumper first



The label is a little scruffy looking. It has a few major crinkles on and slightly light and dark patches on it. The corners are also peeling off. The method definitely has an amateurish look.

5th: Sticker on wet bottle



There are a number of crinkles on this label too. (One of these does seem to be due to 'seam' on the bottle though.) The edges are all fairly well attached though. Still not a very professional finish.

4th: Plain Sticker



This label has a few crinkles. It has some slightly light and dark areas. The edges seem to be attached fine. Another pretty poor finish though.

3rd: Sticker with glue stick



This has only minor crinkles on. The colour of the label is more consistent (though I think this is because the whole label is dark because you can see more of the bottle colour through it.) The edges are all perfect. Of all the labels done with stickers, this is the only one that looks nicely finished.

2nd: Paper with glue stick



It was a very difficult decision between the two paper labels for first place. Both had good and bad points, but both looked excellent. They both have perfect edges and no crinkles. This one with the glue stick suffers only from a couple of bobbles under the label where bits of glue or something got under it. The glue stick appears to have left the paper slightly darker, but only very slightly. This is a professional looking label.

1st: Paper with milk



The winner for appearance is the label attached with milk. Just to confirm, there is no smell at all. The label itself is perfect. Its the whitest of all the labels - the milk seems to have left the paper in really good condition. The only downside of this method is the bottle itself around the label has some stains on, signs of the messy milk. I imagine with some practice just the right amount of milk could be applied to avoid this.

Final Appearance Notes:

The paper labels are clearly preferable to the stickers. They are thicker, and had less wrinkles. Either of the paper solutions would be a great way to attach labels. One interesting point is that having brought the bottles out of the cold brewery room, after a day all of them had considerably less crinkles, but even after this the order didn't actually change.