I homebrew beer, and I get my bottles by de-labeling stuff I buy. However, I tend to forget what state they’re in so I designed my own label holder with slide in labels. Cardboard boxes hold bottles well, but they’re not see thru. Now I know! STL: https://www.printables.com/model/562504-hanging-sign-clips
When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Using a pen directly on the box or on a piece of tape was no option? Don’t get me wrong, I like it and am lacking the creativity to do such things. But it does seem overly complicated.
This let’s him change the label. From ready to need more to whatever. Tape gets used up which is wasteful. Market directly on box gets ugly and unreadable very quick.
This is like a bigger more readable reusable label like you find on filling cabinet folders.
You’d have to replace the tape or box, and if you have a decently large setup (bottling every month or whatever) that can get old, so I get it, but I’d probably use a clothes pin and laminated label myself in that case.
Hey OP, nicely done! Can be used for a bunch of other stuff, too, like garage sale labels!
On a home brewer side note, have you considered getting some swing top bottles? They are super easy to reuse, way less work or waste than even capping reused bottles (just the initial spend and then gaskets every few years), great option for the stuff you’ll drink yourself (you’d probs still want to bottle stuff to give others tho, swing tops are an investment), and you can use them for other fermented beverages like kombucha if you like.
If grolsh beer in the swing tops is available near you at all, you can get a bunch of that, and reuse those bottles. In many places that’s the cheapest way to get swing top bottles, not even including that there’s beer in them. I have 3 cases worth of them 😁
I have considered swing tops but I have trouble believing that they’d hold well enough. I bottle because I don’t drink much or quickly and I want to give away stuff.
Have you used swing tops? Can you recommend them? I have some from another brewer but haven’t tried them. I could try a few next batch.
I love my swing tops tbh. They work just as well as capped bottles, except a lot easier to do. I struggle with my capper, and swing tops are just… flip down the lock. The swing top bottles I use are grolsch, which is beer imported from Germany, and they stay sealed well enough to cross the ocean 😜. The glass in swing tops tends to be pretty thick specifically for reuse, so bottle bombs don’t really happen, instead you get fountains when you open over-carbonated beverages.
If you have some already and the gaskets are still good, the next time you brew a batch, fill a few and test them at different times (2 weeks, 1 mth, 4 mths, whatever timespan you normally go through) and see if they hold up well for you.
If your friends are good about returning bottles (most of mine are) it’s really nice to have an easier system.
I have about a 30% success rate bottling with flip tops. I normally keg but wanted the flexibility to bottle, but I had a lot of flat beer that I had to pour into a mini keg and force carbonate.
Valid question. As others have said, it’s for change ability. I do write in sharpie on the box for the box capacity and contents. However, I have 3 or 4 of these boxes and I swap around the stuff in them a lot. It’s always bottles but sometimes the box is full, sometimes not. Some bottles are ready, some need de labeling. This way I know at a glance what the status of my inventory is.