https://imgur.com/a/SG23lNE
My collection of flavours has grown significantly over the past year and it was increasingly difficult to find what I needed at a glance. I also didn't like the idea of storing some flavours in plastic for what will likely be years to come, so I decided to take the plunge and invest in glass for everything (thank you, Cloudy_Shaman for the inspiration). I grabbed a mix of 30, 60, and 120ml bottles, glass pipettes, labels and stickers, and set about getting my shit sorted.
I just finished round one of re-bottling and it's already so much more satisfying to use (and pleasing to look at). I'm still on the hunt for opaque storage containers that will suit my needs, but in the meantime I'm just keeping them in a few shoe boxes.
In case anyone is interested in the details, I used these Avery labels, which are waterproof polyester. I used a laser printer for the labels, and the ink has held up to all of my attempts to smear it. The typeface is IBM Plex Mono. Once printed, I cut each sheet to my desired size using a simple cutter, which made 32 labels per sheet.
I've also ordered these stickers which are 1cm in diameter and numbered 1-300. When they arrive, I'll affix them to the caps and update my spreadsheet accordingly so I can quickly find what I need without having to rifle through all of the bottles every time I want to mix something.
This solution is so much nicer than having 100+ bottles spread all over the place in trays and bins, and not being to able to quickly identify them from the top down.
I like your labels, I use normal paper adhesive ones which I hand-write and cover with sellotape to half-waterproof them.
I suspect you'll quickly get bored of the faff with the pipettes though, washing them becomes a pain when you've done a few recipes. With the glass ones you always have the risk of breakages and with re-using disposables it's difficult to clean out the bulb (and obviously throwing away the disposables is just wasteful), and the removable rubber bulbs are a pain to clean/dry too, you'll constantly have a pile of glass and rubber and be wondering if they're dry inside yet.
Also, with the pipette way, you're always in danger of knocking over an open bottle of flavour, obviously you'll be careful not to, but easy to do and fairly calamitous if it happens and since you have to leave the flavour open to put back any excess in the pipette, it stays open longer, not good for the flavour anyway, and can be knocked over while you drip in the flavour, then put the pipette in the dirty jar, then back to the open bottle, lots of hand movements around the danger area which it's easy to get blase around when you're in the swing of mixing. And if you have some water from cleaning left in the bulb, you can contaminate the flavour when you put the excess back.
Even if you're completely scrupulous about how much you draw, so never have excess to put back, that slows you down, and if you're mixing by weight you can't be bang on anyway, and you still have the dilemma of either putting the pipette down to close the flavour bottle right away, minimising risk of knocking it over but interrupting your flow and possibly contaminating the tip etc. or leaving it open until you're done and leaving the flavour bottle open longer.
You could hold the loaded pipette in one hand and one-handedly screw the top on the flavour bottle with the other but you'll probably be doing it with your off-hand unless you switch hands, and whichever hand you use, once in 50...100...eventually... you'll fluff it and spill the bottle of flavour.
All that lot is what eventually turned me off using pipettes.
I get that it's nice to have flavours in glass, glass bottles with built-in pipettes is a half decent compromise but I still prefer soft PTFE plastic bottles with a dripper tip, no risk of spilling the lot, no washing other than the odd wipe with a tissue and nice accurate dripping with the ability to squirt with immediate stop when you want a few grams of flavour in a big mix, no going back to the source bottle for more, no being careful not to drip from the tip between flavour bottle and mix etc.
If you're worried about the PTFE for long-term, maybe have your bulk flavours in glass in a cupboard and 10-30ml at a time in little PTFE bottles with built-in drippers, you'll not have wasted your investment in the nice bottles but can cut out all the pipette faff.
That's my intended solution when my order arrives - mine are a bit of a mess at present, I just bought a large stash second hand from a guy so not got them as I want yet.
Finding the flavours is tricky unless you can see them all at a glance, especially when your collection is growing. I get what you're saying about labels on the lids. The cases u/synphul1 uses is a nice solution but depends on always having smallish containers.
I tend to like them all laid out in alpha order of the flavour name, either on my old custom-made shelves (in an always cold room, only source of sunlight behind them) with the mother-lode of the flavours I had in bulk in glass elsewhere, or as now, since I don't have a workshop to build nice shelves, on a shelf in a cupboard - photos here.
Thanks for sharing your setup! I've added it to my collection of DIY community pics (there aren't many recent examples outside of u/Apexified's old post).
Haha, it definitely sounds like you've had your fill of pipettes. I appreciate the advice, but it's really not an issue for me. I prefer to keep this hobby compartmentalized from the rest of my life, so having all of these wares on display in my home isn't something I want to entertain. I mix a few recipes maybe once per week for about an hour, so I like being able to set it up, do a mix, and then tear it down and pack it away out of sight again.
I do have a larger stash box that stays in storage, with the 120ml Boston rounds of staple flavours and other supplies to refill from. If I happen to knock over a bottle or somehow crack a pipette while mixing on the steel counter, then so be it. I'm grateful to have an income that allows me to just pick up another bottle on the next order. I do have an ample supply of glass pipettes though, and disposables as a backup, so there shouldn't ever be a risk of using them wet. Only time can tell, I guess; maybe I'll be back here complaining about it in a couple years lol
:) - I must say there's a lot of value in what is stylistically appealing to the process, I have been arguing with myself about rebottling all my flavours in glass with built-in pipettes and accepting the risk of spills purely for the thought that all my flavours are in glass and just how nice it would look, and dripping from a glass pipette does have a lovely feeling to it.
The thought of all my flavours in orderly lines, with the labels all the same height below the curve.. I get embarrassed at myself sometimes lining up rows of bottles evenly, making sure the taller bottles are at the back :):)
Great posts, and perfectly timed as I'm feeling the obsession of neatness this week. I've been lucky enough to be able to house all of my flavors in a medium sized "college fridge", turned down to a nice 38°. So far I've fit about 200 flavors in it, but finding what I need has been a nightmare. Most of the time is spent with the door open, letting out the nice cool air and cursing at the poor organization. I'm going to inherit an old but larger wine fridge... will report when I land on something worth sharing, and not quite as embarrassing as the college fridge mess. :)
Those labels are nice, but isn't using pipettes a bit of a hassle?
It's definitely not as quick as a dropper bottle, but for me it's worth the extra 5-10 minutes of clean-up. I bought enough pipettes to mix half a dozen recipes at once (which is rare for me), so I just toss each one into the "dirty cup" once used and then wash up when I'm all done.
I'm hoping to find suitable containers that will hold 60-100 flavour bottles each, to keep the storage more manageable. A third container holds my bases, working nic, pipettes and miscellaneous mixing gear.
Looks nice. I've left mine in their original plastic dropper bottles. The cases I'm currently using I think are sold for nail polish? Plastic divider cases with a handle, hinged doors on either side. Will fit up to 30ml bottles (60's and larger won't fit), 24 per side/48 per case.
Image of my cases. Not the most compact space saver but easily viewed to identify through the closed doors. May not work for you depending how many you've got. 3 cases can hold 144x 30ml. (edited)
Thanks for taking the time to re-upload your pic, I love seeing what other folks use to keep this hobby organized. That's definitely a cleaner solution than many others I've seen, but I'd like to find something that won't leave so much wasted space. I hope to top out at about 200 flavours, so if I can pack them in like sardines, so much the better. The shoe boxes are working well, but I'm on the hunt for a container of similar size with a secure lid.
Eventually I'd like to get them on some sort of shelves or racks maybe. But that won't likely happen until I replace my desk and move things about some. I've still got a dozen or two bottles in the 60-120ml range that won't fit those cases but they work for the time being for the smaller bottles. The bigger ones aren't so bad, it's the little ones I had packed away in cardboard boxes and in ziplock bags stacked on top of the bottom rows of bottles. A real pain lifting each little bottle up to read the label and invariably while hunting for a flavor would pick the same one up 3-4x as they shuffled about.
Once I get a new desk and rearrange hoping to have a more dedicated mixing station. Keeping stuff packed up and digging it out just to mix makes it a chore. So I find myself just mixing a few things up and then being done with it instead of enjoying it as much as I'd like. The cases help with that some vs those boxes.
I've seen some clever solutions. One that stuck in my head was a cabinet that was built and hung/attached to the inside of a closet door. I think it was in someone's basement. With the closet door open the 'door' to the cabinet dropped down and pulled out sort of like a murphy bed or ironing board, was actually a narrow desk hinged in the middle with swing down legs for the one end of the desk. The other end still attached to the door. Once open a rack with multiple hinged sections folded up like an accordion extended out and straightened out to provide a set of shelves the length of the desk along the back edge of the desk. There were a few other shelves inside the cabinet space for things like vg/pg etc. That way the work space was temporary and when done everything folded back up and the desk tucked up and enclosed it all contained within the closet.