How to print stock (racking/packaging) labels

Breww’s stock labels are those generated in relation to a racking or packaging event. They don’t typically have a barcode on them for your own tracked containers and will only have a barcode on for non-returnable (NR) containers if they are printed after racking (and in relation to a specific racking).

For tracked containers, you can scan the container’s permanent label to assign it to a delivery - it doesn’t need to be a barcode produced during the racking/packaging process.

For information on how to rack/package your beer, see Racking (packaging beer) in Breww.

Three ways to print stock labels

1. Before racking

This can be done via the Planned packagings tab on a batch.

Printing NR numbers on pre-packaging labels

By default, labels printed will not have NR numbers (for Cask and Keg) or Packaging IDs (for Smallpack), as these are usually generated when you create the packaging. However, you can optionally choose to NR numbers or a Packaging ID when printing labels before packaging.

Cask and Keg

To print pre-packaging labels with NR numbers for cask and keg, just select the Would you like to print these labels with unique non-returnable numbers? option when printing these labels.

If you choose to print pre-packaging labels with reserved NR numbers, you will need to scan the container that you’ve attached the label to during the racking process or manually select the reserved NR numbers that you’ve used, just like packaging into a tracked container.

DO NOT also include it in the Number of non-returnable containers packaged, as this will assume you haven’t used your reserved numbers, and generate new unique NR numbers.

Smallpack

To print pre-packaging labels with a smallpack Packaging ID, just select the Would you like to print these labels with a unique Packaging ID? option when printing these labels.

To associate the Packaging ID with the packaged beer, simply select the Packaging ID during the packaging flow or scan the Packaging ID if you are using Breww’s app.

2. Immediately after the racking process on a computer (not the mobile app)

After completing a racking on the website, you’ll be taken to a racking success screen. From here, you can print the stock label, which will show an NR number & barcode for the NR containers. These will be the reserved NR numbers if they were scanned or manually entered, or newly generated NR numbers if not.

3. Any time after racking (on the website or the mobile app)

Once a racking has been completed, you can go to the batch, then the Actions tab, and find the racking action in the list. If the racking has just been done, it will likely be the last row in the table. There is a print button here.


Do you need NR barcodes on your labels?

You’ll need to decide if you want to track the specific NR containers that are delivered to customers or not (we have breweries who do this both ways).

  • If you always want to “perfectly” track which specific container was delivered to which customer (and therefore have full end-to-end traceability from ingredient to customer), you will need to print the labels using one of the options. This will need to be after the racking has been completed if you haven’t reserved NR numbers, as they otherwise aren’t generated until after it has been completed. When completing deliveries, you will need to scan the container’s NR barcode to assign it to the delivery.

  • If you are happy for Breww to automatically allocate your NR containers to your deliveries, on a first-expiry-first-out basis, then you don’t need to have the barcode on these labels. You can enable this setting in SettingsDelivery settingsAuto assign productsAuto assign non returnable casks and kegs. You can then use the “Auto assign” buttons in the deliveries area of Breww to let Breww pick an NR to use and assign it to the delivery.
    If you wish, when using this method, you can check the automatically assigned container’s batch number and make sure to deliver one from the same batch. This way, you can still maintain full end-to-end traceability from ingredient to the customer, but it’s slightly more error-prone as barcode scanning isn’t used to reduce the chances of mistakes.

If you use your own tracked containers, they will always have their own unique barcode fixed to the container, which will uniquely represent them, and all three label printing methods are suitable.

If you would like to print a tracked container’s barcode on stock labels for tracked containers, you can do so by enabling the Display returnable barcode on stock labels option in SettingsLabel settings. We don’t usually recommend this, from a practical point of view, as this means the correct stock label must be matched to the correct container after printing the labels, and the containers will have permanent barcodes on them already that can be scanned instead.


Customising what is shown on stock labels with custom templates

If you go to SettingsLabel settingsCustom stock label templates, then you can make your own label templates. Having made a template, you can choose which container types should use this template. Templates use “variables” to substitute into the template the correct name of the product, expiry dates, etc.

Be careful to make sure that your custom template will actually fit onto a single label (if you make the template too big, you may have issues printing).

When making your own templates, we suggest you assign your custom template to a single container type first and make sure to test it out. The easiest way to test your template is to use a “Planned packaging” on a batch (for the right container type) and generate some labels. If you have any troubles, you can always keep your template and unassign it from any container types, so that you can keep working on the template without “breaking” any labels that you need to print.

I’m trying to find out if I can specify if I want the BBE to be printed on the stock item label or left blank for writing on. Ideally this setting would be linked to product container type for us.
Is this a feature, or is there a work around that I can use to have cask and keg etc labels printed without a BBE at point of racking?
Cheers

At the moment, showing the BBE date on stock labels is either on or off, I’m afraid. You can toggle it in Settings > Label settings. You could toggle this setting before printing for each container type, but this is obviously a bit of work. If you’d like this to be a setting per container type, please could you create a feature request for this in the feature requests section?

There are a couple of alternative features which may be a solution for you:

  • You can change the best before date and print labels via the ‘Stock breakdown’ tab on the product’s page. So if you just go here to print the labels after racking, that may be a solution for you.
  • We have a feature to allow you to specify additional best before time per customer type. This might not be what you’re looking for but I thought I’d mention it just in case! You can do this by going to Customers > Settings & tools > Customer types, then edit a customer type.

I hope this helps.

We’ve been looking at how we could operate with current functionality for a week or so and we’re aware there are developments coming for the stock labels but wondered how easy/possible it would be in the shorter term to maybe have the BBE toggle off for all labels however if a BBE date is entered manually in the override section when creating the racking have that print?
Cheers

Following the conversation at Additional Information on Product Labels or Customisable Labels, we’re exploring a proof of concept for a possible fairly quick solution for you to define a custom label template per container type. This way as long as you always wanted the BBE for some container types and didn’t for others, this might cover your use case?

Or would you sometimes want the BBE shown and sometimes not for the same container type? Cheers.

Following up on this, it would be a very simple change to always include the BBE date if entered in the override section, despite having the BBE date off in Label settings.
It would be worth mentioning that there’s only a BBE override when printing labels pre-packaging or via planned packagings, not when printing post-racking. Both of these pre-racking labels don’t include container numbers etc as they’re not directly linked to an actual racked product. Have a re-read of the main article’s ‘Before racking’ section if you’re not sure what I mean. Essentially, if we went down this route and made this change for you, you would only be able to override and display the BBE date on labels that don’t show the container code/number, would this still work for you?

Edit: It’s now possible to reserve container numbers when printing labels via a ‘Planned packaging’ and print the container barcodes on these labels

That’s incredible quick and helpful response thank you!
Yes we’ve played around quite a lot now (on our 3rd demo) so have differentiated between the pre-packaging, the pre racking labels and the post racking features.
With my limited understanding and reading I think it would be OK not having the container code/number on the label as we’d just use this for inhouse canning case labels that need a BBE (our draught doesn’t at rack point).
With further research/training it might be that existing features can be utilised i.e. delivery labels etc but I haven’t really got my head round those yet and how we’d effectively utilise them.
I’m in that pre purchase/implement stage of can we transfer or adapt our current established processes
to make it work and then fine tune our processes maybe further while using and when we understand better all the available features.
Cheers for your tolerance, would be great to know this simple feature could be accessible from the get go to get my brewery mgrs sign off.

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No problem at all. In fact, I’m sure this little tweak would be helpful for other breweries as well as for your own testing, so we’ll look to implement this very soon.
If you did need a demo of any other features, feel free to get in touch about this and we can book something in.

We’ve now implemented the quick tweak to allow you to override the BBE date even when the general setting is turned off. I hope this helps!

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Im struggling to get my Dymo Labelwriter 450 printer to the stock labels,
Its as if the label size isn’t supported - any ideas?
We use 70mmx54mm labels .

Or can anyone reccomend a label printer that does work with it ?

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The maximum label size for the Dymo Labelwriter 450 is quite a bit smaller than Breww’s label size. You might be able to get your computer to “scale down” our labels and use the Dymo printer, but this isn’t something we can officially support or recommend, to be honest.

We recommend the Zebra ZD420 Thermal Transfer printer, but in theory, any printer that can print 4"/110mm wide labels should do the trick. In addition to Zebra, Citizen and Brother also make good quality label printers intended to print labels of this size. More on our recommended labels/printers can be found at:

If you’ve any questions on this, please let us know :+1: