Custom Caps Make Their Mark

Homebrewers and craft brewers alike know what’s inside their bottles is something quite special. But there are only a few ways to use the outside of the bottle to tell the world how great the stuff inside is.

Labels typically have been where most of the creativity has gone, but a Houston man has just made it a lot easier for brewers to make their mark, literally, with customized, digitally printed bottle caps.

BottleMark got its start shortly after founder J. Cameron Cooper caught the homebrewing bug. He found himself brewing often, and before long, he had numerous styles in similar bottles in his refrigerator, and was having a hard time keeping his suds straight.

“We tried to get different caps for each batch. Our local homebrew store had maybe four different varieties, mostly overruns. So, we had some [caps] that repeated, and they were all cryptically labeled. I had a Post-It Note in the fridge as a ‘key’ for all the beer. We thought about labels, but you’d have to peel them off again to reuse the bottle, which was a pain,” Cooper says. “Eventually, it dawned on us: custom bottle caps! You put them on and take them off anyway, and they’d make the bottle look really professional, too, besides acting as a label. It would be really good for gifts, too—we gave away a lot of beer—and great for parties.”

While Cooper and his brewing buddy thought the custom cap concept was obvious, a Google search quickly revealed that nothing like it existed.

“I remember searching the web for custom bottle caps, certain that someone must do this. Nope, unless we wanted a whole pallet full—half a million caps, two tons worth,” Cooper says. “Needless to say, that didn’t fit our budget.”

Cooper, who says he carries around “lots of ideas for inventions and businesses and such,” was certain he was onto something with the custom bottle caps idea. And for years, he tried to figure out how to make it both cost-effective and simple.

“I designed machines during lunch breaks and did research after hours, sort of as a hobby,” he says.

In 2009, job changes forced Cooper’s hand and he decided to turn his hobby into a full-time job rather than spend that time finding a new one. Even with more hours on his side, Cooper found that it took longer than he imagined to design and build the machine that now takes any digital image and turns it into a bottle cap.

“We have a printer that uses inkjet technology, just like your common desktop printer, but is highly specialized. More than that is a trade secret,” Cooper says.

The BottleMark system makes it easy to create and order any number of custom bottle caps—from only one to hundreds—at a flat rate of 12 cents each.

Here’s how it works: A customer goes to bottlemark.com and uses the online tool that lets you see what the image and text will look like on a cap. After the design is approved by the customer, the caps are created on Cooper’s custom cap printer and mailed to the customer.

Speaking of customers, Cooper says his fledgling company, which is based in Houston, Texas, is already becoming a favorite among homebrewers who want to inexpensively add a professional-looking flair to their bottles or even just label their beers simply and effectively, but he was surprised to discover another niche.

“We also get non-bottling customers—bottle caps are big in crafting and jewelry. Lots of birthday and wedding caps, too. Some are for beer, others are for cupcakes or decorations,” he says.

Still, Cooper says another big goal is to help smaller craft brewers make their mark.

“My hope is that BottleMark’s custom bottle caps will help the craft beer movement—especially the new and purposefully small brewers—show the same excellence on the outside of the bottle that’s on the inside, and really push through to the next level of potential craft beer drinkers.”

Check it out at bottlemark.com. ■