Cap That! and Stripping Labels

After bottling those last coupla batches, I realized I needed to get busy prepping bottles for the next few. So...it's time to strip some labels. Big tub, bottles needing stripped, enough water to drown a moose, a coupla scoops of Oxyclean and an hour soak. Poof, those labels fall off easier than you forget it was just a two-drink minimum. Some brands use some freaky sticky glue, but most labels fall right off after a good soak. A light pass with a scrubbie to remove any residue, and they'll be ready for rinsing and sanitizing.

 Before I got busy cleaning empties, I made some cap labels for the batches just bottled. I'll make milk labels for them later, but I wanted to get the caps labelled right away--I don't want to get any of the bottles mixed with other batches! Avery 5408 are freaking perfect for this: 24 to a sheet, so you can do a case with each page; and exactly bottle-cap sized. Since I didn't have full cases of either batch just bottled, I used a couple of the extras to tag the boxes before moving them into the pantry.

 Isn't Find and Replace All one of the most useful buttons ever??? Woot! (Completely beside the point for cap labels, but get a cheap little Brother 2200 series if you want to do inexpensive milk labels for the bottles themselves. Laser printer labels won't bleed, and those Brother 22xx series are cheapest cost per page you will find anywhere!)

 Once you have cap labels on your homebrew, you can consolidate cases if you need to conserve some storage space, and still find that bottle.

 Up tomorrow night in the Kitchen: raspberry wheat cook from a kit from MoreBeer. Hopefully spring will actually have sprung about the time this porch swing beer will be ready to rock!

It's gonna be cold and nasty again next week, but by the time this porch swing beer is ready to tap, it should be just the ticket! In the meantime, drive like a maniac and jump like a crocodile!