Show us you favorite stein.

Just drop the can in, close the lid tightly and pour. Worked on soda cans as well. Couple of decades before the pop top came along.

 

Here’s what I found. Neat !

https://beachpackagingdesign.com/boxvox/canned-museum-beer-5-revere-tapster

 

Mine still works. OK, granted that the placement of the oversized piercer unit lands right on the rivet for the pop top, so you have to hit the lid pretty hard - knocked the lever portion right off the can. (But, recall, in 1936, those cans were thick steel).

RIGHT IMAGE - Yeah, maybe I hit it too hard...

 

A simpler way to use a beer can as a drinking vessel was just to roll the edge and not crimp on a lid. Lots of brewery workers used them at the "free beer" station at work, like these guys at Ruppert and Rice Lake breweries.

Here's a 16 oz. Schaefer and an 30's era Krueger which some even soldered on a handle.


Similar cans were used at brewery sponsored or supplied picnics and college reunions. You can find Princeton Class Reunion cans from Ballantine, Schlitz and Budweiser at NJ flea markets all the time, just do a Google image search "Princeton Class Reunion beer can".

 

Rheingold even made a combination can piercer/handle. Open the can, snap on the handle.


Urban legend has it that the unit was being misused as a weapon (think reverse brass knuckle w/a point ) and supposedly the brewery collected them from retailers and cemented them into the foundation of a brewery addition being constructed at the time. (I've found a number of them at flea markets and they are not uncommon in the hobby, so they didn't get all of 'em).

 

On this unit you had to open the can with your own opener, but then you could snap it into this sort of skeleton stein, complete with a lid.

 

Read all about it -
Free Beer in brewery workers' union contracts The Sternewirth Privilege

What mug?

It's just a base, handle and lid. Before the internet, people had to amuse themselves in other ways. (Yeah, after I posted the pic I realized it didn't fully show what was going on. Thus my "skeleton stein" comment.)