729 Bottle Caps – Why I Love My Beer Bottle Top Collection

It started years ago. I was returning to the small Oxfordshire town that I called home in my early 20s from a day’s work in London. I stopped into the newsagents near the station to pick up some cigarettes, and ran into one of my best friends and his father, their arms full of beer. I asked what they were up to and my friend, Chris, informed me that he was collecting the bottle tops to make a piece of artwork – he was an aspiring photographer at the time. He was going to arrange them in a grid of 8×8 (with one missing to be “artistic” – his words) and this meant he needed 63 bottle tops, and he still needed 20 or so to get there. Asked if I wanted to help drink some beers, I sighed, rolled my eyes, rolled up my sleeves and muttered “I guess I can drink all your beers in the name of art” and set to my arduous labours.

Eventually, after a lot of fun, Chris had all the tops he needed (though he’d do an even larger composition later on as pictured below) but he remarked to me “it only took me a couple of weeks to get 64. How many do you think we could get in a couple more? Do you think we could get up to a thousand one day?” and that was it really. It felt like a challenge had been set. How many could I get? And so began (what I assume will be) a lifelong journey. Also Chris owes me a new liver.

After that first night, I stopped into every off licence or supermarket I passed and found more. I discovered a bottle of Jamaica’s Dragon Stout in a Richmond newsagents, and a bottle of Goose Island Honkers in a Chiswick pub. I left Waitrose in Henley-on-Thames next week with a trolley full of Badgers, Brakspears, Bishops Fingers, Black Sheep and more, while a West Indian restaurant got me my first bottle of Carib – a lager I love to this day. Then I discovered websites like Beers of Europe and the like, and would sink my hard earned wages into boxes full of random beers from all over the world. The first time I did it, Chris and I worked through 16 beers, from Tahiti’s Hitano to Spain’s Mezquita, and we were thoroughly sozzled by the end of the evening, but it was so much fun.

You could go on a tour of the world through these beers, calling in at Argentina for a Quilmes, before jetting off to Finland for a Lapin Kulta. Head down to Australia for a VB, before visiting to Germany for a Thurn & Taxis, stopping off for an Almaza in the Lebanon on the way. You’d discover all of those different flavours too. From traditional ales and bitters, to bizarre concoctions brewed with grapefruit, shellfish, chilis or who knows what. From lagers you could pick up in any supermarket to the smoked tripels coming from those German brewers doing as much as they could with their limited ingredients. It was incredible, and it’s a journey that has been filled with so many happy memories. 

I even started steaming off the labels and making collages that decorated my rooms. And even after the initial hunger for finding these beers left me, I never could resist a bottle top I didn’t already have. Long after those efforts to get Chris those caps he needed for his art, I’d find myself in a supermarket buying some beers purely because I didn’t have those bottle tops, or awkwardly asking the staff in pubs, bars and even clubs if I could keep the cap they just discarded while fetching my beer. In lockdown, when I was starved of entertainment, I did a couple of those big orders just to have a couple of fun evenings talking on Zoom while sipping odd concoctions from every part of the world. It’s been a fun, quiet little hobby and I like doing it.

More than the memories though, I love the things themselves. Effort has gone into every single one of them, from the most basic designs, to the most elaborate artworks. From the historic Bass red triangle (the world’s first registered Trademark if you’re into your history) to the elaborate modern art on the Patagonia cap, all the way through to the humour found on some of the ones whose names I have since forgotten. I even have two different Duff Beer bottle tops that I found in Barcelona years ago. Each one of them is something beautiful, even the Buds, Fosters and Carlsbergs that may seem so common to all of us. The next time you’re opening a bottle for yourself, take a moment and look at the cap before you cast it into the bin. It might be funny, pretty, humorous, historical, bonkers or bland, but an artist or a designer put genuine effort into that, and I guarantee you they don’t get any kudos for their labours.

And speaking of variety, there is just so much. If animals are your thing, I’ve got bears, owls, rams, tigers, birds, lions, orcas, and so much more, all sandwiched between a pack of dogs and a flock of geese. There are flags of the world, heraldic crests that perhaps would have been lost to antiquity, and beers that celebrate events and occasions. There are mythological beasts from phoenixes to dragons, along with letters, hands, hearts and all sorts of things. It would be hard to pick my favourites but maybe this microcosm contains the ones that actually mean the most to me, either through their looks, or because I remember how I got them.

Where am I planning to take this collection? There are no formal plans really, but I’d quite like to hit 1000. Or I suppose I would quite like 1024 as that would be another square number. So the search will quietly continue, and if I pick up a few more each year, that’ll do for me. When I hit that number, I guess I could try and make a display of them and see if a gallery or pub wants to show off a collection of old bottle tops. We’ll see. I guess I should tidy this all away again, but only until the next time I want to gaze at them all. 

One final note to leave you with; one of those sessions drinking with Chris had featured a large quantity of beers that were not at all enjoyable to drink. Too strong, with flavours that punched you in the tongue had us both feeling a bit sick of beer. We had one beer left of the night and it was a Flying Dog beer. Usually an excellent brewery, I’d purchased some 11% nightmare of an ale for the blue top I didn’t yet have. As I decanted the bottle into our glasses, I read the quote from Hunter S. Thompson that typically adorns their labels, before adding a conclusion that might be among the funniest things I’ve ever said:

“Good People Drink Good Beers – …We Must Be Arseholes”

Cheers