Brew your own beer for long enough and eventually you'll get around to swapping bottles with fellow homebrewers. Here's a simple and clever way to label your brews for all to see.
I started using "Hello, My Name Is" labels for my homebrews around the holidays. I was including a few bottles of beer and cider in care packages and wanted something a little nicer than my usual masking-tape sticker. There are templates for designing and printing your own labels, but I wanted something a little easier. I found an old package of these "Hello" labels in a drawer, and I was good to go.
Besides looking bold and graphic when wrapped around the brown bottles, I like how much space there is to write on these labels. Even after listing the kind of beer, the date it was bottled, and the ABV, there's still plenty of room. I started getting creative with made-up descriptions like, "Drink this beer on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of winter while waiting for a pot of chili to cook." I had a blast writing them and my giftees responded enthusiastically.
A label like this is better (and more fun!) than a piece of masking tape any day. Good beer deserves a good label.
Related: Beer Brewing for Apartment Dwellers: Brooklyn Brewshop's Smaller, More Accessible 1-Gallon Beer Kit
(Image: Emma Christensen)
5 Things Paris Taught Me About Travel
Recipe: Ham, Cheddar & Chive Egg Bakes
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Bacsac Bacsquare 04...
Apartment Therapy's Sofa Shopping Guide
Nikki’s Sweet and Cheery Print Studio
do they soak off easily for reuse of the glass?
Hmm...not sure, since I've given away all the bottles that I labeled! I should think so, though. I've also heard that OxiClean is really good for taking off beer label residue.
I tend to receive empty glass in return when I hand full bottles out, haha. And I demand that people return the 22 oz bottles.
actually, what I've taken to doing is writing on the caps themselves with a thin sharpie.
The best method I've found is to use a laser printer (laser is critical - inkjet-printed labels will just smear) to create whatever label you'd like on plain old printer paper (I design them full-page and then print 6-to-a-page for 12oz and 4-to-a-page for bombers) and then use milk to stick them to the bottle after you've filled it.
Pour some milk in a flat dish or plate, dip the back side of the label in the milk and slap it on the bottle. Wipe it down with a rag to squeeze any extra milk out and wipe off the bottle.
It works, it's cheap and they come off readily with a little water (unlike a lot of the sticky labels out there). I found out that I don't really want to hand-write labels for 50 bottles and marking the caps gets confusing (did 'P' stand for porter or pumpkin? When did I bottle this?).
We use blue painter's tape since it's more about efficient labeling than presentation, for us anyway. When you're brewing several batches at a time, this process can be a little time-consuming if you're only planning to give it to give it to friends or age it. Also painter's tape is cheap and easy to remove (so you can reuse bottles)
I like the milk label ideas. As the wife of a brewer who has spent countless hours boiling the labels off old beer bottles I'm in favor of anything quick, easy, and simple to remove!
That is a cute idea, and maybe one to use for special gifts to people you don't expect to return the bottles. But I would think the best way is to mark the caps. Even if it's not difficult, removing those labels is just a sucker of time.
Having to wash bottles with OxyClean every time would bother me. I did that for a little while just to be extra clean, but it would raise the pH of my StarSan bucket (even after rinsing twice) to above the effective limit.
I make "fired on" labels. It's just enamel paint baked in the oven at 325 for 30 minutes. Spray paint or craft paint seem to work, latex enamel house paint didn't. I write on them with a sharpie or grease pencil. It works great, looks great, and I don't have to de-label and re-label them every time I brew.
I use duck tape and a sharpie when I don't have empty enamel-labeled bottles. Similar to painters tape, but doesn't have the chance of peeling off due to condensation.
I'm definitely going to try the milk labels though. I wonder how well writing on them with a sharpie after application will work.