BottleMark Custom Bottle Caps and Labels: For Home Brewers and more!

Your Face Now Available on a Cap: BottleMark Brings Digital Printing to Custom Bottle Caps

July 26, 2011

Houston, Texas — J. Cameron Cooper had a problem: too many beers. As an enthusiastic homebrewer, he experimented with so many batches at once that soon his fridge overflowed with unlabeled mystery beers. The solution? “Custom bottle caps,” Cooper said. “They make it easy to identify what’s inside. Homebrewers put them on and take them off anyway. They’re cheap, fun, and make great souvenirs when a batch is gone. Problem was, I couldn’t find any!”

In the age of digital printing, where you can print your Facebook picture on just about anything, bottle caps are still printed the old-fashioned way. Using giant machinery and customized plates, packaging plants personalize bottle caps in a process called offset lithography. The technique creates a durable, high-contrast cap but is only economical in large runs. All bottle cap producers require minimum orders (usually a whopping half a million), and designs typically max out at five colors since the machines can only handle five plates in a row.

At this rate, most craft breweries can’t afford specific caps for all their brews; they usually compromise with a one-cap-fits-all model. Homebrewers are simply out of luck under this production model, and crafters don’t even think about custom caps.

For years, homebrewers have tried to work around the problem by placing stickers on caps or even just using a Sharpie to label a cap. But Cooper decided it was high time to bring digital printing to bottle caps—and custom caps to the people.

This summer BottleMark opened its online doors to the public. Thanks to the company’s digital printing process, BottleMark promises no minimum orders and no color limits. Even photos print in vibrant detail and at the same cost as a two-color cap. The caps are fully lined, industry standard, waterproof, and bottle ready. “We’ve even got this online design tool,” Cooper said, “where customers can upload their design and preview it on a cap. We’re kind of like Cafe Press but for bottle caps!”

So what’s the going price for the “Mona Lisa” on a cap? “We’re charging only twelve cents per cap—I know, not a lot, but the homebrewing community is growing every day, and caps are all the rage among crafters and scrapbookers right now.”

Is offset lithography for caps on its way out? Only BottleMark—and time—will tell.

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If you’d like more information on this topic, please contact Haley E. R. Cooper by email at: hercooper@gmail.com

Press Release

Your Face Now Available on a Cap: BottleMark Brings Digital Printing to Custom Bottle Caps