Do Bar Bottles Still Exist?

Well, as I said, I don't really remember the 1987ish price, but, there was an "ahem" Art Bar in Rochester called the Barrel of Dolls, that sold these bottles for $2 each over the bar at the same timeframe, so $12 doesn't seem an unreasonable guess.

 

I would buy returnable cases of Point and Leines for use at the cabin. I think I did this until about 2003 or 2004. Loved the tactile feel of those heavy bottles.

In college, we could get Pickets, Sterling, Black label and Rhinelander for $3.99 plus a deposit of $1.10. There may have been another brand but cant recall.

 

I remember picking up a case of Blatz returnable bottles in Milwaukee in the mid-2000s.

 

I remember in law school we bought 5 cases of the bar bottles that we "needed" to finish off that weekend. My roommate needed them to bottle his home brew.

 

Returnable bottles are indeed excellent in homebrewing - they are 'extra' sturdy.

I can't even guess how many times I have reused my returnable bottles over my past 20+ years of homebrewing.

Cheers!

 

They were still around in the 80's too but I guess its been at least 25 years or so since I remember seeing them. They had them for soda too as some others have mentioned and I think those were still in use (in Florida where my grandfather lived) much more recently.

 

I don't remember this from the 70's but from 2012.

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/anyone-remember-returnable-cases.46523/

 

Went to germany this year. They still reuse glass bottles. Being only 31, I don't remember seeing this in my youth, everything was new bottles as far as I can think back. I was actually a little grossed out thinking how many mouths (and possibly other orifices..... my buddy put that in my head, thanks) possibly touched these bottles before I did.

 

PA Distributors sold these in the 70s/80s, just stacked up on wooden pallets, I used to buy Gibbons 16 oz bottles back in the day under $5 a case, my dad was into Carling Black Label. But I bought Reading, Iron City too. I'd imagine they went the way of the Dodo Bird, it's a disposable world.

 

Those waxed sturdy cases were awesome.

In a pinch, you poured a bag of ice in them and BAM>> instant cooler. Finish the case, dry it out and all good.

I would laugh at older movies where folks would shatter one on someones head and the person would stand there nearly unphased. Those things were nearly unbreakable.

 

Two slightly different graphs [one based on percentage, the other on total barrelage] borrowed and adapted from various years of The Brewers Almanac from The United States Brewers Association, Inc.

Starts around 50 years ago in the late 60s, before throw-away bottles (in blue) first started outselling returnable/refillables (in red), showing the disappearance of the latter mid-2000s.

>click image for full view <



And, from 1981 (dawn of the "Craft" era), the states in which more than 10% of the packaged beer sold was still in refillables:


Save for a few curious exceptions (Alaska? South Dakota?) primarily states with strong "local and regional" breweries and/or mandatory deposit laws, and, for PA, the case law.

 

I had a friendly local store that would let me pay the 5 cent deposit for the returned empty bottles. It saved them the work of storing and returning the case and gave me the sturdy bottles and cases for my homebrew without having to buy Bud. One time i got a case from some asshole who liked to smoke while drinking and put his cigarette butt in every damn bottle that I had to clean.