Opening Comments

What better way to open this bucket of brewful rambles than with a brief rundown of some of some of my favorite bottle openers? And unless you’re a collector of said utensils, could I pick a less engaging topic with which to drive away casual readers?

The actual inspiration for this topic was an item I came across at work the other night. We’ve all heard the expression “Gonna hammer a few brews this weekend.” Well, why not take it a little bit more literally? Get Hammered! 

The Beer Hammer!

Is there someone on your Christmas list that doesn't need one of these?

If you’re like me, you like carrying your keys around tacked to a belt loop with a carabiner. No bulky mess of metal crap jingling around in your pockets, easy access and you always know where those keys are, right? Can you say the same thing about your bottle opener? Well, yes, now you can!
S-Biner Ahhh

The S-biner Ahhh is a solid little keychain carabiner and will always be handy when you need it most. Except for that time you lock the keys in the house...and you really wish you had a beer while waiting for Pop-a-Lock. (If it’s any consolation, you’re beers will likely be inside with your keys and ALL the can openers you own.)


Everyone has keys, but too few folks today have churchkeys.

Brutally simple, clean and lovely. Few uses other than opening crown-capped bottles or punching openings in flat-top cans. Purity of purpose in a bent piece of metal. Truth and beauty, for less than a dollar, even with a magnet glued to the back so you can slap it at the fridge and never misplace it. Seriously, simplicity of purpose, design, creation AND use. Design cannot surpass this.

A slight variation on the churchkey opener was the paint can opener/bottle opener:
Nobody was ever going to keep a “paint can opener” around...they’d just use whatever pry tool was handy. But if the paint can opener would open a beer? Who wouldn’t leave one of those in the garage "just in case?"

Again, beauty revealed in the simple truth of it's design.

If you favor hidden beauty to revealed truths, perhaps an attached opener might be more to your preference. It's function concealed while its body is fully revealed, the mounted "wall" opener will always meet your opening needs as unobtrusively as possible. Misplace things after you've opened a few bottles? You can’t get more difficult to misplace than “permanently attached.” The standard wall-mount bottle opener (or fridge-mount, etc.) looks something like this:



A tin box directly below the opener and you’re right in line with the kind of bottle opening technology Checker’s Lounge was on top of 30 years ago! Along with every bar since the crown cap became popular.

Perfectly Simple. Simply Perfect.

Screw it into the side of your beer fridge, your workbench, or just the wall out in the garage. It'll do it's job.

Oooh, a new one! (Well, new for me and this post anyhow!) Certainly not for the anti-gun crowd, this .50 caliber opener is definitely ready to help you out with a shot and a beer. :-P