Tip: Zipper Bag Archival

My first nine batches of home brewed ale and lager,
neatly archived in zipper close bags:

From the beginning I've been keeping every piece of information, associated with each batch of home brewed goodness, in zipper close bags. I find myself referring to the contents of these bags quite often.

When I start each batch, I write the batch number on the bag and start filling it with everything associated with that batch. Some typical contents are my BrewHacks Instruction Sheet, receipts, cleaned ingredient bags, labels, kit instruction sheets and recipes printed from the Web.

This inexpensive system keeps everything organized, allows me to quickly access any information about a batch and does not take up much space. I keep all the bags in a small cardboard box.

Batch number 7 was brewed from my own recipe:

Batch number 8 was brewed from an ingredient kit:

As you can see, even when I brew from an ingredient kit, I still build a BrewHacks Instruction Sheet. I prefer the format and additional information provided over the kit instruction sheets. Plus, should the kit ever go out of production or is just out of season, I already have a store list and instructions I can use to recreate the batch.