New shelves in progress

When I was saving empties, I used to organize by brewery. I liked how the similar artistic style sat together. And then I moved. And threw them all out in frustration on moving day. And will never save empties again, except for homebrews.

 

I used to collect one bottle of each new beer I tried, then the wife put a stop to that. Now I just keep bottles for out of distro beers, but even that is getting out of hand.

That said, when I was keeping all of them I had no system, I just put them up there. I'd recommend avoiding organizational systems unless you like spending time rearranging a lot.

 

I only save ones that I thought were really special, so I think I have 10-12.

 

To the OP: If there's a deposit law where you live, I'd suggest keeping them in a safe. Bottle zombies are everywhere.

 

I'll disagree and say that whenever the bottles exceed the display space and start to accumulate in boxes, then you're a hoarder. I'm there with 1,750 in my collection, but only around 1,300 on display. (About 60 feet of '1-bottle deep shelves' along the basement walls of my man cave.)

To the OP, I arrange mine by brewery. There's not too much rearranging that needs to occur as long as you know you'll be acquiring more from the same brewery and save some space for the future ones.

 

i just save special bottles. the rest i take a picture. much less space...about the size of a micro sd

 

I thought about saving bottles. Takes too much space. I thought about saving labels - aggravation. I keep enough bottles for a couple batches of home brew and recycle the rest. I do have a nice bucket of bottle caps going, though - just kept tossing caps into a little bucket and have a bunch of 'em now. That's cool for the ones with art on them, but doesn't help with a Jack's Abby plain cap... I have taken to inserting a picture in my spreadsheet.

Organization - I think like any other collectible, whatever makes sense for you personally. Maybe solicit input for ideas, but it has to make sense for you, I suppose. That might depend on your OCD tendencies.

 

Yeah, by brewery and bottle size works best for me. I have around 300 bottles and have around 250 on display. I put the big bottles in the back, small bottles in the front and I put the series bottles together (Yetis, Avery Anniversary, Vertical Epics, etc.)

 

So much OCD in this thread.

 

Just photograph them all. Think what would happen if Indiana had an earthquake. Or worse, you had a child.

 

He's right! I don't know how prone your area is to tremblors, but the Loma Prieta earthquake busted half of my collection, just like my dad told me would happen. Either put up a wire, use museum wax, or, better yet, collect bottlecaps instead. Less space, cool art and unbreakable!

 

This may be more of a question for your therapist than the BA community.

 

I know many of the good bottles don't have labels, but I've just started collecting them. You can mount and frame them, or put them in a sticky photo album. For the cool bottles that are etched or painted, a lot of people have them cut down so they can be used as glasses. Something to consider.