Bottle Collection Display

Before you get too deep into your collection I recommend that you do a search of this forum to see different opinions about whether to keep all bottles, some bottles, or no bottles but keep the labels. Many collectors decide that the bottles take up way too much space and then dump their collection after a short period of time. Thus my recommendation to think strongly about this before you jump into it.

Many comments that are posted in these threads mention that a wife or girl friend is especially happy to see bottles removed from the main living areas in a home, but a man cave is typically okay because that's your space. I have the space for my collection, but that's a luxury because I have a large, mostly-unused basement for my display. And bottles use up a lot of space! I have about 1,200-1,300 bottles on display on 4" deep shelves that line about 55 feet of wall space to the 7' ceiling height. I've run out of space so that the other 500 or so bottles are packed away until I decide what to do with them.

Good luck on whatever you do.

 

Tried the bottle collecting thing but they seemed to get really dusty and I quickly ran out of space. I now keep labels only.

 

I always wanted to do one shelf near the ceiling in every room and give it a "continuous" sort of look throughout the house. Anyway, the Loma Prieta earthquake rolled though town and broke half my collection, just like my dad said it would. Now I only save really old or special ones...and use earthquake wax!

 

I just switched to the same. Bottles clutter so now the only handful of bottles I have are permanently painted ones. Everything else I peeled. Much easier to keep binders of labels or create something with the labels than have loads of bottles hanging around.

 

There have only been a few labels I've been unable to remove intact. Damn you Du Claw Sweet Baby Jesus!

 

I plan to have some sort of display when I have my beer area.
I have 2 or 3 cases of bottles that are special in some way - really cool labels, one offs, batch 1 and so forth.
I will probably accumulate more, but those are the ones that I will display. Most of the rest of my bottles, especially bombers, go for bottling homebrew.

 

Pics?

 

Because of the length of wall space and that it uses 3 sides of the room, I had to create a collage of individual pics to show my collection in one pic. Thus the result is somewhat small and skewed, but here it is. Plus, there is about 6 feet of wall space that does not fit in that is off to the right side.
http://s1156.photobucket.com/user/mothergoose03/media/Bottlecollectioncollage.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

 

Nice set-up! I know you're not exactly in earthquake country, but do you do anything to ensure the bottles don't fall off?

 

Thanks for the compliment. Each of the shelves has bottles assigned to it that are all the same height, and there is a hole that is drilled into the underside of the shelf above. The hole is slightly larger than the diameter of the bottle's mouth, and the hole is drilled about a half inch deep so that the top of the bottle fits into it when the bottle sits on the shelf. Spacing between the shelves varies depending on the height of the bottles assigned to that shelf. Spacing of the bottles (as well as the under-drilled holes) is dependent on the diameter of each type of bottle that is on that particular shelf. Only the very top shelf at the ceiling height, and some sections in the shelves which have bottles of varying and non-standard heights, do not have any special anti-fall mechanism.

 

I see it now. That's a great way to maximize space. I'm sure you've seen it, but there's a guy who built his house (I think in NY) around his can collection (that is nice and tight, like your shelves), only he has 80,000 cans. 80,000 cans, by the way. Built his house AROUND HIS COLLECTION, by the way. So, to hmmmbeer10, hire a contractor for best results!