Yes..it's true. After much thought, hesitation and soul searching, I have reached the point where I must... with great regret and hand wringing... get rid of my collection accumulation of beer bottles! (and a few cans)

*sigh* 35 years ago, I moved East from Kansas, and discovered GOOD BEER. This coincided almost exactly with the revival of small craft breweries in the USA, and I actually acquired one bottle from the New Albion Brewery of Sonoma, California, which was "the beginning" of the revival.
Out of curiosity, I kinda 'kept' one example of each type I tried (slowly at first; there being very few decent American brands, and imports were mostly German and Australian... some quite good. After 5 years, I had 'several dozen' or so and a hobby obsession was born.
As the years went by and more & more new breweries opened, I build shelves along the wall leading to my workshop. Alas, by that time, I had more bottles than would fit on the shelves... so...boxes, stacked 'here & there'. Soon, I last track of what was in the boxes (never having been a great cataloger or record keeper)... but oh, the plans to BEGIN record keeping!

Fast forward to the last few years, where it was common knowledge to those who drew my name for Xmas that Bill D was easy... just go get a six-pack or two of some interesting beer.... and the collection accumulation grew rapidly. And with the FSGW Getaway, good friends began bring me neat stuff from England, Wales, Scotland, Canada, New Zealand...etc..But many duplications began to occur... and not even I could remember what was in all those boxes. But one (read-me) had to be SURE; so dupes grew.

What also grew was my workshop and need to have shelf space for 'stuff' and to cope with those boxes...so....I decided to photograph the bottles and get rid of them. Easy, hmm? Nawwww... they were dusty, and I had to clean, arrange, REbox and REstack everything.

Arrgghhh.. took a few pics, revised 'plan' to 'just photograph a few special ones'. Decision process of identifying 'special' when they were scattered in many places became more complex than doing pics.

Seemed so simplistic 35 years ago.


Anyone want a collection accumulation of 'interesting' beer bottles? I thought not...

Did a few more photos and will begin 'surprising' the recycling truck every Monday for a few months. (I'm guessing there are over 1000...maybe 1200)


(I will soon post the dozen or so pics of the special ones I couldn't resist)