Book review: 99 Ways to Open a Beer Bottle without a Bottle Opener 

Here at Tapped Life, we occasionally review beer. We drink it quite often, but don’t always feel the need to pontificate on it. You like a beer or you don’t, and someone else feels the same way or differently. Life goes on. You drink more beer.

Here at Tapped Life we review books even less frequently then we review beer. Although that doesn’t mean there aren’t good books about beer out there. This one, in particular seems to be incredibly helpful: 99 Ways to Open a Beer Bottle without a Bottle Opener, by Brett Stern (available on Amazon).

If you were wondering, we have William Painter to thank for our current beer bottle/cap combo. Painter was a machinist and was hired by a bottle manufacturer to standardize bottles, necks and caps. He developed the ingenious “crown cork cap” to seal in all the beer goodness in every bottle. Thank you, Mr. Painter.

Painter’s solution was so good that a new device must then be invented to open those caps. Again, Painter for the win. However, since the invention of both bottle caps and bottle openers, people have sometimes found themselves with a bottle of delicious brew in hand and no opener in sight. Hence, the genius of Stern’s book. 

Stern lists (you guessed it) 99 alternative ways to open a beer bottle. We aren’t going to give them all away, because you should go out and buy the book. However, to whet your appetite, we’re going to share 3 ways with you*:

1. Pry the cap off with a disposable lighter. Tapped Life has employed this method with 95% success.
2. Use the metal frame of your propane tank to pry off the cap—easy does it while grilling!
3. Place the bottle cap between the iron and curling bar of a curling iron. We did not attempt this at Tapped Life because we don’t own curling irons. But we thought it was hilarious that people still own these. Maybe just to open beer?

Happy drinking, friends!

*Just be careful. Always exercise caution when doing anything other than breathing.