Part and parcel of my decision to make a kegerator was to reduce my consumption of bottled beer. As a cheery self-check, I keep all of the bottle caps from beer opened at my house (whether I drank them or not) in a big container and add them all up at the end of the year to see how I did. So, the kids and I had fun on New Year’s morning counting, sorting and practicing “practical” math.
This year was much better than last, with a total of only 225 caps in the container. Here are the brewery totals:
38 – Bell’s Brewery – 16.8%
22 – Left Hand Brewing – 9.7%
18 – Capital Brewery – 8%
14 – Avery Brewing – 6%
14 – New Belgium Brewing – 6%
14 – Sam Adams – 6%
None of the other breweries in the stash cracked 10 caps.
The single biggest drop over last year was for Czech Pilsners (Budvar and Pilsner Urquell). Combined, these were my top source of caps in 2007, but Budvar’s move to distribution by A-B (and 33 not carrying it anymore as a result), and a half barrel of Victory Prima Pils in the kegerator for a good chunk of the year really put a hurting on my consumption of Czech Pils. I’m very surprised that Schlafly didn’t crack 10 caps (there were only 8), but I think having a keg of their Oatmeal Stout on has disuaded me from picking up as many bottles as I normally do.
Goals for this year? Less bottles, more kegs. Reducing bottles to 150-ish seems very plausible. I also really need to turn my kegs more quickly (a hearty thanks to Dylan and Andrew for their patience on this front). Once I work through the slight bottle backlog I have, bottled beer is out of the main fridge, and back into the kegerator.
Congratulations Dave! I wonder how many of those caps were actually your consumption, and how many were form the rest of us? As I recall we had at least 2 events at your home this year (IdiotFest and the backyard BBQ early in the fall). IdiotFest we did a lot of keg and mini-keg beers, but I think we had quite a few bottles when we grilled that day. Here’s to 2009!
C
I think a good number of them are from other people, but probably not more than 10% or so. I’ve been to some beer-worthy locations, and toted back quite a few bottles as “souveniers.” As a result, I built up a bit of a backlog of beer, and have been really working on that the last couple of months which also skewed the results some.
I love the idea. I too have been collecting my bottelcaps but i’ve threaded then and painted then turning caps to curtains. It’s always an amusing activity when you’ve had too much of a great beer!! Cheers and happy new year….
Curtains? Outstanding. I applaud the creativity, and the reuse of materials!
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