Take one down, pass it around...

January 13, 2011 4:48 PM

Fifty vintage beer cans from Dan Becker's book entitled "Beer: A Genuine Collection of Cans".
posted by gman (18 comments total)

The fiftieth one actually looks far better when you enlarge it.
posted by gman at 4:59 PM on January 13, 2011

Does not do what it says on the tin! There are only 49 cans!
posted by cjorgensen at 5:00 PM on January 13, 2011

When I was a kid my dad had a beer can collection (two of his favourites were BEER and Billy Beer), with a wall-mounted display case and everything. None of them were this old, though; I've never seen seen a can shaped like these. #48 is my favourite, but only because "Gluek's Stite" sounds like the sort of name they gave diseases before science took over and gave them boring ones like "glaucoma" and "arthritis."
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:06 PM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

My favorite is #11, but they are all cool. Thanks!
posted by Duffington at 5:08 PM on January 13, 2011

Three Things:

1) Kudos to the LA Times for not making me click through 50 pages of ads to see all 50 old beer cans;

2) Falstaff* is a wonderful brandname for beer!

3) I knew a guy whose step-father had purchased and saved several cases of Billy Beer. For his retirement? I don't know. He was a restoration architect and he collected lots of old crap. Step-father didn't know this then -- and he may not know this now** -- but, save for the couple of six-packs on the top of the stack, every one of those cans of Billy Beer is empty, having been drained via pinholes lovingly punched by the guy I mentioned at the start.

---------------------------
*"A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is ultimately repudiated after Hal becomes king." Just like beer!

**Hello, Bill. Now you know.
posted by notyou at 5:11 PM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

#29 ("Cincinnati Burger Brau")'s spokesman has apparently decided to drink a different beer, although this was probably a design choice made to avoid the problem of having to draw an infinite number of tiny cans within each other.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:14 PM on January 13, 2011 [2 favorites]

What a crappy list.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 5:19 PM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

I like these.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:27 PM on January 13, 2011

Those are cool. I like the graphics, colors. Interesting the old bottles had a sort of neck like glass bottles.

Into the mix adding fun things made out of beer - and soda- cans (Russian site nsfw at the bottom of the page).
posted by nickyskye at 6:45 PM on January 13, 2011

Ahhh, the great conetop. It was introduced as a way for bottling companies to run cans along the same assembly lines as bottles. Look closely at #6, 13 & 14 and you'll see the cap, the same as on a bottle of the same vintage. Aluminum and tin cans are neat chunks of easy datable history as conetops were only in production from 1935 to the mid 50's, when the three piece soldered can won out, only to be replaced by the current two piece can in the late 60's or early 70's and the current type with attached pull tab in the 80's.

A fun trick I used to pull when I was in an old barn or other building was pull a conetop (or what other type of can was available) off of a shelf and do my best CSI move: "This stuff dates from the 40's based on this beer can." An equivalent was looking under the lid of a toilet tank to date houses from the 50's or 60's: "According to this toilet, this house was built in 1958." It helps, if you wear sunglasses, to pull them off as you say this. However, doing your best Rodger Daltrey yell isn't as effective as you might hope.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 6:49 PM on January 13, 2011 [4 favorites]

I used to collect beer cans back when I was a young teen. Only had a few conetops though, they were damned hard to find. They were also bar far the coolest. Nothing more exciting than finding an old pile of cans behind an abandoned barn, and seeing that conetop shape...
posted by Windopaene at 8:38 PM on January 13, 2011

Oh yeah, number 23. I grew up living next door to the Goetz family, and I think I had one of their conetops.
posted by Windopaene at 8:41 PM on January 13, 2011

All of these seem far more appealing than the shit I'm drinking right now.
posted by Capt. Renault at 9:02 PM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's fun to see the ones that are still around today, like Leinenkugel's (#13) and Grain Belt (#36). When I was in school in Wisconsin, my roommates and I had rule against frathouse beer decor, but the old Grain Belt clock we found was cool enough to make an exception--although the beer itself wasn't anything special. After school I moved to southern Brazil, where I was flabbergasted to find in a truck stop a can of "Grain Belt Export."
posted by hydrophonic at 9:02 PM on January 13, 2011

I traded my 007 can for a dirt bike.
posted by clavdivs at 9:05 PM on January 13, 2011

Falstaff is a wonderful brandname for beer!
It never occurred to me until now that there might be people who have never heard of Falstaff beer. 'Twas a common brand growing-up here in the midwest.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:47 AM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

Falstaff is a wonderful brandname for beer!

It's likely the most presciently named brew on the list, provided a fellow drinks enough.
posted by hell toupee at 6:36 AM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]

About those pin holes... collectors always drain the beer (from the bottom) because the liquid rusts the can from inside out over time. So the guy was actually doing his step-father a favor (assuming the old man wasn't hoping some day to drink a stale, crappy macro-brew).

Here's my take on that Falstaff character.
posted by sixpack at 8:32 AM on January 14, 2011 [1 favorite]