MY BEER CANS
How This Beer Can Bug Won His Wings - by J.S
I've been collecting beer cans continuously since age 10. I have about 1,700 cans with just over 1,500 on display, a small collection for someone who's been in the hobby as long as me, but several factors have affected its size, which I'll discuss momentarily.
Not including craft cans, I estimate 60% of my collection is steel, broken down as 40% straight steel (SS), 12% crimped-steel (CS ), and 8% two-piece drawn & ironed steel (DIS), also known as extruded. About 40% are aluminum. An embarrassingly low percentage are flat tops (FT). Six are cone tops, five of which have Internal Revenue Tax Paid (IRTP) printed on the label, a practice that began after prohibition and ended on March 1, 1950. My one non-IRTP cone is an off-grade West Virginia Special from Fesenmeier Brewing Company of Huntington, West Virginia, my hometown.
Huntington is located along the Ohio River near the point where Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia meet. It was the largest city in the state when I was a kid, and remains the largest city in the Tri-State region, with Ashland, KY and Ironton, OH being 2nd and 3rd largest respectively.  Some of my cans went missing during a move in the mid-1990s. They should have been in a box (or boxes) with other cans. This raises the possibility that many others are missing too, begging the question, "which others?" Otherwise I seem to have all the important ones. I now maintain a computer spreadsheet with a detailed inventory of all cans - those on display, in storage, and extra (or duplicate) cans. I'd know exactly which cans are missing had I done this before.(left) My off-grade West Virginia cone top. Collectors grade the condition of beer cans on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the best, or mint, and 5 being very poor (not fit for display). This can would probably rate as a Grade 3.
The Size Of My Collection
It's a no-brainer that I'd have a bigger and better collection if not for the fact I grew up in a state where the legal alcohol level for beer was only 3.2% by weight until 1981 (4% alcohol by volume). The macro brewing companies also held sway over distributors. The 3.2 law and the dominance of the macros made building a beer can collection challenging for a kid in West Virginia. Simply put, the number of brands available was limited, particularly in Huntington. When I started collecting cans, Huntington's beer scene was ruled by StrohFallsCityBudSchlitzMillerPabstF  alstaff, or SFCBSMPF, which in fairly short order became BudMillerStrohPabstFalstaff, followed for very brief periods by BudMillerStrohPabst and BudMillerPabst. Today this entity is known the world over as BudMillerCoors. (right) Drawn & ironed steel can
As a kid I hunted cans primarily on foot within a couple miles of the house. I stopped doing that by the time I was in high school but my collection slowly continued to grow. Reaching the legal age for consumption certainly helped some. Owning a home helped tremendously.
As an adult I certainly could have devoted more time and energy to collecting over the years. But beer cans are just one hobby and interest of mine, which includes homebrewing beer nearly every other week, beer recipe development, beer & brewing history, and a whole
 host of other hobbies unrelated to beer. I'm also a professional rock musician, composer, and recording artist. My official music website has more information (click link) www.skidbaxter.com(left) Flat top can
West Virginia had (and still has) a small population but it's spread over 24,000 square miles, much of it tough terrain. Once the majority of other states raised their legal alcohol limits, many regional brands seem to have disappeared from West Virginia, or at least from the Huntington area. It wasn't always in the best interest of regional brewers to set aside resources to produce and distribute special batches of 3.2 beer for my home state because all were struggling against the macros just to keep the lights on.
Conversely, Huntington is a border city, so Fesenmeier, later known as Little Switzerland, had no choice but to produce separate batches of each recipe, 3.2 beers for West Virginia and stronger beers for export to Kentucky and Ohio, thus putting a strain on valuable resources like ingredients, water, manual labor, and more. In this way, the 3.2 law hastened the  brewery's demise. A multitude of dry areas in the middle of its sales territory only made matters worse. That the brewery stubbornly hung on until 1971 is a genuine testament to the quality of its products. These factors combined to make the local market an easy target for Anheuser-Busch (A-B) and the other macros, enabling them to gain a firm grip on West Virginia and Huntington. After all, they had the volume to brew as much 3.2 beer as required to serve the area. Beer drinkers in days of yore were by and large, buzz-hungry, and the federal government did not permit the true alcohol level to be printed on beer labels. But all beer sold in West Virginia carried an annoying tax stamp declaring "not more than 3.2% alcohol by weight," which again is 4% abv. This gave the impression that 3.2 beer was an inferior product (it was not). Huntingtonians would cross the river into Ohio and drive 8 miles west to find so-called high-test "6-Point" (6% abw) beers and a selection of oddball brands in the "wet" town of South Point. Thankfully, some of those oddball brands ended up along Huntington roadsides. But almost nobody knew that the vast majority of those 6-Point beers only contained about 3.4 percent abw (4.3 percent abv), the national average.
I have no idea who the top seller in Huntington was during the 70s & 80s but I've always been observant. As a kid-collector I consumed my share of newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. I paid close attention to which beer brand(s) each Huntington distributor represented, who was advertising, where & how often they advertised, how big or extravagant the ads were, which brewers sponsored local activities like Marshall University sports, and which brands I found most often while hunting cans. Stroh's and Falls City seemed to dominate. My friends and I thought any can outside the SFCBSMPF realm was tough. Beer Styles It's both funny and sad that up until the late 1980s in post-WWII America, if someone told you a store carried a variety of beer it meant they had a selection of different brands, not different beer styles. One of my big epiphanies of can collecting came after the craft beer revolution when I realized 90% of my vintage cans, and probably yours too, represented only one style of beer: fizzy, light, straw-colored American adjunct-pilsner-lager. It should be noted that Little Switzerland's Charge Premium brand, introduced in 1968, was described by brewery officials as being an all-malt European style pilsner-lager, a rarity in an era completely dominated by adjunct pilsner-lager.  Oddly enough, a variety of beer styles actually did exist in Huntington and other American cities before prohibition and for a brief period before WWII. In the 1930s Fesenmeier had responded to market demand by adding a dry-hopped English pale ale to its roster of beers. They also brewed a dark lager - what was effectively a schwarzbier. For Christmas season they produced culmbacher - a dark, hoppy lager style that originated in the German town of Kulmbach during the 19th century. And like many US brewers they made a traditional bock beer for spring. Bock Myth I get a kick out of an absurd myth that originated some time after WWII which says bock is made by "scraping the bottom of the tanks during spring cleaning." The myth persists to this day and some people still believe it. Any brewer attempting to operate like that would be out of business in a week. Fermentation vessels must  be rinsed, cleaned, rinsed again, and sanitized between every single batch of beer, not once a year. Ask any brewer to name the two most important things about making beer, and their answer will invariably be cleanliness and sanitation.Bock Beer Bock typically ranges in color from copper to dark brown, with bready, malty flavors, mild bitterness and very little hop character. Some versions have dark caramel malts like CaraMunich and roasted malts like Carafa for added color. American versions before the craft beer revolution usually had some adjuncts like corn or rice added to the grain bill. Building the Collection My friend Chuck Dandelet got me interested in beer cans when we were kids after he started a collection. My Dad had a fit, but I persisted. Later I found a book at the library called "The Beer Can," written by members of the BCCA (Beer Can Collectors of America, now known as Brewery Collectibles Club of America). I learned from reading it that my hometown once had a brewery and it produced beer in cans. From that moment forward nothing was going to keep me out of the hobby, not even my Dad blowing his stack. My parents had some bad news when I told them about my amazing discovery: the brewery had been torn down some years ago. Not long  after showing the book to Chuck, we were out hunting for cans and he found a West Virginia Light flat top can (with gold trim) under about 6 inches of snow. All our friends started collecting too and it got really competitive. My Dad soon warmed up to the idea of me collecting beer cans. Yet for some reason he would not allow me to join the BCCA. My Mom was very understanding. She even took me around to all the distributors in town to ask for beer signs (I think Dad took me a couple times as well). Everyone was more than happy to oblige me except the Pabst distributor, which was run by assholes.Every year when the new phone book came out I would immediately turn to the beer & ale wholesale section of the Yellow Pages to see if any new brands popped up. The local Stroh distributor, Central, also handled A-B products. The Falstaff people, Nessiff, carried Schlitz, Blatz, Carling Black Label, Colt 45, National Bohemian, Augustiner, Hudepohl, Burger, Mark V, and Peter Hand. Each of the remaining distributors mainly represented products of a single brewing company: Miller by Atomic, Pabst by Holiday, and Falls City by North Pole, which previously had also distributed Fesenmeier and Little Switzerland beers.  I took advantage of every opportunity to add to my collection. The first big one and most memorable was meeting Mark Ferguson - BCCA #5836, who gave my then-pitiful collection a much needed boost of 35 cans, all of which are currently on display except for a missing aluminum Jax with rocket-bottom. (right) Me in my Huntington basement at 11 years old after meeting Marc Ferguson - BCCA #5836, holding one of 35 cans he generously donated to me.
On a few occasions I received surprise-boxes of cans in the mail from a relative. At grocery stores I'd head straight to the beer cooler and then talk a parent(s) or sibling(s) into buying a certain beer so I could have the can. I pulled cans from the dumpster behind a local Holiday Inn where our family swam for free (in the pool, not the dumpster) because the motel was owned by close friends of my parents. I found my first conetop at age 11 on Christmas Eve under the mausoleum of a nearby cemetery, a 1940s Duquesne IRTP Can-o-Beer produced in McKees Rocks, PA (only 10 miles from where I live now). As a teenager I returned to the mausoleum and found some 1950s Hudepohl IRTP cones after getting permission to search there from the cemetery caretaker Gary Sumpter, whom I'd known personally since I was 7 years old. His son Steve was a school mate and remain  s a close friend. Vacations were a good resource for cans but due to the economy, we only traveled a few times after I started collecting. Friends and neighbors would return from out of town with a can or two. My 6th grade elementary school teacher brought me 3 cans from her trip to France. Even my Dad contributed a couple cans after covering sporting events out of town. (right) Can with "rocket-bottom."
My favorite hunting spot was in a local park just below a turnaround circle on a ridge top overlooking part of Huntington, the "lover's lane dump." I restored a few cans with oxalic acid, but if I knew then what I know now, I would have hauled away much more than I did.
Space, Or Lack Thereof My wife and I lived in Dublin, OH for more than a decade and bought our first home there in 2003. I built shelving in the basement for about 1,400 cans but the total space allowed for 3,000. It was during my time there when I learned certain vintage cans I believed to be tough were common as dirt. I wanted change that without building more shelves. My intent was to control the size of the collection by narrowing the focus to cones, FT, and SS. I also branched out by adding Fesenmeier and Little Switzerland breweriana. Space became an issue in 2012 when we moved to Mt. Lebanon, PA six miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Our house was built in 1946 and it's small. The cans are displayed in the basement and the bulk of them are on the shelves I built in Ohio, which I altered to fit since the ceiling is just under 7 feet high. That alone cost space for 128 cans, leaving me with shelving for just over 1,200 cans. For the first 7 years until Covid hit I was playing music on the road more than  ever and didn't add many cans, though I did net about 20 flat tops after trading guitar picks for cans a few times with a fan of a band I was in. I've continued acquiring Fesenmeier and Little Switzerland breweriana but that only goes so far due to the space concerns.(left to right) Steve Theado and me on tour with American Dog somewhere in the United States, possibly Hampton Beach, NH. By the way, my stage name is Vinnie.
From 2012 until 2023 I was under the impression that I'd maxed out the can display space at my house in Mt. Lebanon. My musical collaborator / former bandmate from American Dog and Rat Bastard Syndicate / and beer can & bottle collecting buddy Steve Theado thought he too had maxed out the space at his house in Columbus, OH. In addition to being an outstanding guitarist and songwriter, Steve is also a skilled carpenter. During the height of the pandemic he found that the ceiling space in the stairway leading to the basement band room had nothing above it. So he ripped it out and added shelving there and along the sides for cans and bottles. That's not all. He's also added new shelves in all four basement rooms in places he never expected to use.  I've made several visits to his house during 2023 and 2024 and after seeing how he is conquering the issue of space, I've realized I can expand my collection too. Inspired by Steve, I've added shelving for almost 250 more cans in places I never dreamed of displaying them. About 70% of my beer cans are in a finished room that doubles as my office / multimedia desktop-recording studio / entertainment area. Here I've added shelving for 68 cans with plans for more. (left to right) Steve and I on tour with American Dog, backstage before a show at Irving Plaza in New York City.
The rest of the collection is in the adjoining laundry / brewery room. Actually, my brewing currently takes place in the kitchen, but I plan to start brewing in the garage soon. And since hot weather is the only concern out there, I can simply brew in the kitchen when the temperature outside demands it. The laundry room is where all other brewing-related activities take place: fermentation, cleaning, sanitizing, bottling, and storage. The cans in this room consist of 12 and 16 oz aluminum craft cans, domestic 7 and 8 oz, "tall" domestic 12 oz, domestic 16 oz, Australian 25 oz (710 ml), domestic and foreign gallons (5 liter), private labels, Billy cans, and a few misprints. To accommodate the cans I added several one-tier shelves in high spaces and along the duct work, plus a small 2-tier shelving unit built exclusively for the 7 and 8 oz cans.
In the meantime, Steve and I have been trading cans with each other as well  as acquiring them from other sources. In less than a year I added almost 300. That number is dwarfed by the amount Steve added!(right) Partial view of stairway to the band room at Steve's house. The picture doesn't do it justice!
Further Expansion The overall goal is to gradually add enough shelving in my basement to expand my collection to 2,000 - 2,500 cans. In the meantime, to make room for new additions, I've been putting certain aluminum cans in storage for the time being, over 100 so far, plus some steel cans with minor differences from those on display. Once I have the space to house the aluminum cans they'll go back on display, but separate from my steel cans. In the event I max out the space once again, all those cans will go right back into storage. More About My Cans I've reached the conclusion that I can't really put forth the time, energy, and expense of making cones and FT cans a priority. However, I am able to expand my number of SS cans in an impactful way, which is why that is now my area of focus. Straight Steel I only add SS cans that appeal to me aesthetically. FT cans are always welcome. Cones are a bonus. CS and two-piece DIS cans are ok but I don't seek any new additions except for foreign cans and occasionally a few US cans.
 I do collect and display private label cans like Shopwell (pictured below - right), which were made for supermarkets, liquor stores, and drug stores. But cans made for collectors in the 70s, 80s and beyond that commemorate events, anniversaries and other interests do not appeal to me, though I do have some examples on display. I'm talking to you and your friends, Bean & Bacon Days can!
Aluminum As for aluminum cans, years ago I developed a bad habit of buying beers like Koch's Golden Anniversary (Genesee - circa mid-90s - pictured below) just because the cans were different, not because they looked nice. In fact, many were quite unremarkable, ugly even. It was less a case of going for quantity
 over quality and more a case of trying to stay enthused about the hobby in general. Although the aim is to thin-out my all-aluminum "legacy brand" cans to store for another day, some remain on permanent display because they have aesthetic appeal or some kind of sentimental / historical value. Well-meaning folks continue to give me craft cans, either forgetting or not realizing that I don't really have space to display them.While I prefer the physical look, uniform shape, and stability of steel cans, I do have some favorite aluminum cans. Most happen to be from the 70s and early 80s. Among them are Heidelberg, Heilemen's Old Style, Keg Brand, Olympia, SGA (pictured at the top of this page), Lucky Light Draft and many more. What these cans have over modern designs is a nice background color, usually white, which covers the entire can from the top to the base, similar to steel cans. Sometimes the graphics aren't so great but the cans are still pretty. The background color hides the dull "sheen" that aluminum cans have. One great modern example of what I'm talking about are the first cans issued by Sweetwater Brewing, also Terrapin's Moo-Hoo Chocolate Stout (both pictured below). They really are beautiful, harkening back to the 70s and 80s cans I described before. Each has a different background color and the graphics are solid. There are others of course. These are just the ones that came to mind.
Labels for steel cans were printed on flat sheets, with several labels per-sheet. Then they were cut and rolled. This allowed for fine graphics and durable inks. But once the drawn & ironed steel and aluminum cans were developed, it was no longer possible to print can labels that way. Instead, the cans had to be made first and then printing was applied directly to the cans. Printing on aluminum presents special challenges, and today only large or well-financed brewers can afford to print on cans, let alone hide the aluminum sheen. Few choose to hide it. A large number embrace the silver aluminum color and make it part of the label.
Craft Cans Craft cans in general are colorful and artistic but many just don't have the charm of vintage cans. Speaking strictly as a consumer, the actual "branding" of some craft breweries is highly questionable, regardless of how eye catching and pretty their cans are. When I go to buy canned craft beer I don't like searching all over the can to find out what style it is. Usually it turns out to be yet another hazy IPA in an ocean of hazy IPAs. But pretty as the cans are, the branding is often so  terrible that I have to resort to looking at the shelf tags to determine the style of beer, and sometimes even that is not enough.Over time I've learned to recognize the artwork of several local breweries. Notice I said artwork, not labels, because they're more like art instead of labels. I'm not sure that's the way to reel in new consumers. It certainly hasn't reeled me in. I'm completely turned off by it as a consumer buying beer to drink and enjoy. Sometimes the collector in me is also turned off by it, though I do have some examples of "label art cans" on display. (right) Example of label art, a beer from Weathered Ground in Cool Ridge, WV called #Camplife. One must look on the back of the can and and read a tiny paragraph to see what kind of beer it is.
Paper labels have appeared sporadically as far back as the 1950s. Those along with shrink-labels have allowed thousands of small modern craft brewers to package their beer in cans. A handful of paper labels have even knocked me out to
 the point of saving the can, including two from Wigram Brewing in Christchurch, New Zealand -Mustang Pale Ale and Jetpack Double IPA.(left) Reverse of #Camplife can.
Shrink-labels look as good as the best steel cans in terms of graphics but I'm not sure I want a whole room full of them. Shrink labels have been known to peel off by themselves. Many folks report finding cans with a very different label underneath. I know of one instance where a St. Bernardus label peeled off on its own and underneath was, quote - "a Japanese brand, not from Bernardus!" If I had to choose between printing on the cans themselves, paper labels, or shrink labels, it would definitely be for printing on the cans. With paper labels and shrink labels on the rise, the beer can is at yet another crossroads, but many brewers will continue to print on cans for the foreseeable future. The good news for collectors is, the beer can appears to be here to stay. Gatekeepers Gatekeepers are creatures who decide what others must do in order to be part of a community. Gatekeepers are in EVERY hobby, including beer can collecting. They forget (or refuse to acknowledge) that hobbies are supposed to be fun, and people take them up for their own reasons. Each hobbyist gets to decide what it is about their hobby that makes them happy. I'm a homebrewer as mentioned previously, and gatekeepers in that hobby can be quite vicious (mainly in the United States, where they don't consider it homebrewing unless it's hard to do). Gatekeepers of the beer can hobby are mostly concerned with the dollar value of cans. They'd say my collection isn't worth a hill of Bean & Bacon Days cans because I have too many cans from the 1970s, which some affectionately refer to as "70s-Shit." They'd claim I put quantity over quality, which may have been true when I was 10 years old, but not today. Some gatekeepers of the beer can hobby describe themselves as "older guys" with "disposable income" from so-called "real jobs." Some of them are dealers who run beer can websites. To be sure, not all dealers are gatekeepers. A long time ago, the hobby of vintage cans turned into a business. This outcome was inevitable, despite the best efforts of the BCCA to keep money out of beer can collecting in the early days. It happens in every hobby that involves collecting. It means collectors like myself who don't (or didn't) have "real jobs" and no "disposable income" have almost no chance at buying vintage cones, flat tops, and yes, even some 70s-Shit cans without paying through the nose. Many pre-70s vintage cans are rare, but some are grossly over-valued. I won't pay more than what I think is a fair price for a can. Antique shops are the worst at over-valuing cans, so I avoid them for the most part. Honest dealers have reasonable prices and shipping rates and will happily combine shipping charges to help buyers save money. I'm wary of those who don't.  Check out the videos below and / or visit my homebrewing channel on YouTube.
(click the YouTube icon below to visit my channel)  Full disclaimer: I have no aspirations to become the next YouTube homebrew star. My channel is strictly for "show & tell" so that I can share my homebrewing adventures with brewing friends worldwide. I don't actively seek new subscribers. If I did that I'm sure I'd have more subs, but then I'd also be obligated to provide content on a regular basis. Even though I brew 2 to 4 times a month, I can barely crank out more than half-dozen brewing videos a year due to my schedule. The small hop freezer seen in the video about my Basement Brewing Area has been sold. I now have a full size fridge / freezer. The second part of the Schwarzbier tasting video shows part of my can collection and places where I've added new shelves, and where I plan to add more. For instance, on the video, directly behind me in the area with the West Virginia bottle cap trays, I've since added shelving for 52 cans, as seen in this photo here on the right. Enjoy the videos...In the meantime, updated photos of my beer can collection have been posted below in "Gallery 2 - 2024."
The 6 photos in this gallery were taken in 2015. A lot has changed since then. I've added more shelving with more to come (see article above). And in 2016 I started homebrewing beer again after a long absence from the hobby. That little fridge has been replaced by a full size fridge, complete with hop freezer. I also have two additional fridges for fermenting beer, allowing me to control fermentation temperatures. CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE
The 22 photos in this gallery were taken in 2024. Notice that my office / multimedia desktop-recording studio has moved to the other end of the basement. This was due to a leak in the ceiling which came within inches of my workspace. The leak was caused by a faulty dishwasher in the kitchen above. All US "legacy" cans are alphabetized by brand. Foreign cans are arranged by country and alphabetized by brand. Craft cans are alphabetized by brewery. CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE
FERMENTATION FRIDGES & BEER FRIDGE / HOP FREEZER
CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE BEST COLLECTING MEMORIES
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Top Six Memories
My favorite collecting memories come from my childhood. This is due in large part to the amount of time I had to spend on the hobby back then; walking the roadsides, rummaging through dumps, nagging my folks to buy a certain beer in order to get a desired can, etc. I have a few more of these that I'll add in the future.
 Conn and I crawled through an open window into the basement of a mausoleum in a nearby cemetery. After finding several old beer bottles, many of them from Fesenmeier, I started looking for cans. It was really dark in there but I managed to find two Duquesne "Can-o'-Beer" cones, definitely not the prettiest beer can in the world but I didn't care.To say I was elated is an understatement. I gave one to Kevin and kept the other. We went back a few years later with the permission of the caretaker (my friend Steve Sumpter's dad) and came away with four Hudephol cone tops.2. Visiting MarK C. Ferguson's (BCCA # 5836) house in Huntington with my oldest brother, Ernie and his girlfriend. Mark was highly regarded in the BCCA back then. It was a bit like meeting a rock star. I drank my first beer there, a Sparkling Champale in the green can which I still have. I also came home with a bunch of cans for my collection and all of these I still have. 3. Finding the Lover's Lane dump. We hit it about 20 times over several years and probably didn't even make a dent in it.  4. Going to Martha's Vineyard as a kid for the first time with my parents and visiting Al's Package Store "Liquors, Wines, & Beers" in Edgartown. I was in heaven. Suddenly, here was a bunch of beer you couldn't get in West Virginia! We bought a six of Milwaukee brand beer, and some loose cans: Narragansett, Rheingold, and Schaefer Cream Ale among others. Al was always there back in those days. He was intrigued that I was so young and yet I collected beer cans. He let me have as many decals with the store's name on them as I wanted; being the savvy businessman of course! The decal pictured here is plastered on one of my guitar cases. 5. The day I got my Zodiac Malt Liquor can (pictured here). My Mom and I were in downtown Huntington and we walked past this car that had a strange beer can dangling from the rear view mirror on a string. There was a fake cheese wedge on the end of the string and it was  stuffed down into the opening of the can. We left a note on the car and walked down the street, when all of a sudden, the owners of the car came back. It was three or four African-American guys and they were reading the note as they got in the car. We walked back and told them we had left the note. They got a big kick out of me and gave me the can. Today it sits proudly on my shelf.6. Going with my parents to the local distributors to get beer signs to augment my collection. A faint smell of beer pleasantly permeated the air. The people were always friendly and never let me leave empty-handed except for the grumpy assholes from Pabst. I still have most of the signs. | The Lover's Lane Dump Chuck Dandelet and I discovered it, and at first we didn't tell anyone because we were all competitive. But in the end it mattered little. Everyone found out about it anyway. It was about 150-feet over a steep hillside below a "lover's lane" and you literally had to climb down the hill to get to the cans where we would be knee-deep in them!
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This is the first can of beer I ever legitimately drank, the milestone occurring at the house of Mark Ferguson (BCCA #5836). I probably didn't get through the whole thing. True, I had "tasted" beer on many occasions; but this was a far cry from those unpleasant sips of beer from the past. And yes, we opened it from the bottom!MY BEER CANS
How This Beer Can Bug Won His Wings - by J.S
I've been collecting beer cans continuously since age 10. I have about 1,700 cans with just over 1,500 on display, a small collection for someone who's been in the hobby as long as me, but several factors have affected its size, which I'll discuss momentarily.
Not including craft cans, I estimate 60% of my collection is steel, broken down as 40% straight steel (SS), 12% crimped-steel (CS ), and 8% two-piece drawn & ironed steel (DIS), also known as extruded. About 40% are aluminum. An embarrassingly low percentage are flat tops (FT). Six are cone tops, five of which have Internal Revenue Tax Paid (IRTP) printed on the label, a practice that began after prohibition and ended on March 1, 1950. My one non-IRTP cone is an off-grade West Virginia Special from Fesenmeier Brewing Company of Huntington, West Virginia, my hometown.
Huntington is located along the Ohio River near the point where Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia meet. It was the largest city in the state when I was a kid, and remains the largest city in the Tri-State region, with Ashland, KY and Ironton, OH being 2nd and 3rd largest respectively. Some of my cans went missing during a move in the mid-1990s. They should have been in a box (or boxes) with other cans. This raises the possibility that many others are missing too, begging the question, "which others?" Otherwise I seem to have all the important ones. I now maintain a computer spreadsheet with a detailed inventory of all cans - those on display, in storage, and extra (or duplicate) cans. I'd know exactly which cans are missing had I done this before.(left) My off-grade West Virginia cone top. Collectors grade the condition of beer cans on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the best, or mint, and 5 being very poor (not fit for display). This can would probably rate as a Grade 3.
The Size Of My Collection
It's a no-brainer that I'd have a bigger and better collection if not for the fact I grew up in a state where the legal alcohol level for beer was only 3.2% by weight until 1981 (4% alcohol by volume). The macro brewing companies also held sway over distributors. The 3.2 law and the dominance of the macros made building a beer can collection challenging for a kid in West Virginia. Simply put, the number of brands available was limited, particularly in Huntington. When I started collecting cans, Huntington's beer scene was ruled by StrohFallsCityBudSchlitzMillerPabstF alstaff, or SFCBSMPF, which in fairly short order became BudMillerStrohPabstFalstaff, followed for very brief periods by BudMillerStrohPabst and BudMillerPabst. Today this entity is known the world over as BudMillerCoors. (right) Drawn & ironed steel can
As a kid I hunted cans primarily on foot within a couple miles of the house. I stopped doing that by the time I was in high school but my collection slowly continued to grow. Reaching the legal age for consumption certainly helped some. Owning a home helped tremendously.
As an adult I certainly could have devoted more time and energy to collecting over the years. But beer cans are just one hobby and interest of mine, which includes homebrewing beer nearly every other week, beer recipe development, beer & brewing history, and a whole
host of other hobbies unrelated to beer. I'm also a professional rock musician, composer, and recording artist. My official music website has more information (click link) www.skidbaxter.com(left) Flat top can
West Virginia had (and still has) a small population but it's spread over 24,000 square miles, much of it tough terrain. Once the majority of other states raised their legal alcohol limits, many regional brands seem to have disappeared from West Virginia, or at least from the Huntington area. It wasn't always in the best interest of regional brewers to set aside resources to produce and distribute special batches of 3.2 beer for my home state because all were struggling against the macros just to keep the lights on.
Conversely, Huntington is a border city, so Fesenmeier, later known as Little Switzerland, had no choice but to produce separate batches of each recipe, 3.2 beers for West Virginia and stronger beers for export to Kentucky and Ohio, thus putting a strain on valuable resources like ingredients, water, manual labor, and more. In this way, the 3.2 law hastened the brewery's demise. A multitude of dry areas in the middle of its sales territory only made matters worse. That the brewery stubbornly hung on until 1971 is a genuine testament to the quality of its products.These factors combined to make the local market an easy target for Anheuser-Busch (A-B) and the other macros, enabling them to gain a firm grip on West Virginia and Huntington. After all, they had the volume to brew as much 3.2 beer as required to serve the area. Beer drinkers in days of yore were by and large, buzz-hungry, and the federal government did not permit the true alcohol level to be printed on beer labels. But all beer sold in West Virginia carried an annoying tax stamp declaring "not more than 3.2% alcohol by weight," which again is 4% abv. This gave the impression that 3.2 beer was an inferior product (it was not). Huntingtonians would cross the river into Ohio and drive 8 miles west to find so-called high-test "6-Point" (6% abw) beers and a selection of oddball brands in the "wet" town of South Point. Thankfully, some of those oddball brands ended up along Huntington roadsides. But almost nobody knew that the vast majority of those 6-Point beers only contained about 3.4 percent abw (4.3 percent abv), the national average.
I have no idea who the top seller in Huntington was during the 70s & 80s but I've always been observant. As a kid-collector I consumed my share of newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV. I paid close attention to which beer brand(s) each Huntington distributor represented, who was advertising, where & how often they advertised, how big or extravagant the ads were, which brewers sponsored local activities like Marshall University sports, and which brands I found most often while hunting cans. Stroh's and Falls City seemed to dominate. My friends and I thought any can outside the SFCBSMPF realm was tough. Beer Styles It's both funny and sad that up until the late 1980s in post-WWII America, if someone told you a store carried a variety of beer it meant they had a selection of different brands, not different beer styles. One of my big epiphanies of can collecting came after the craft beer revolution when I realized 90% of my vintage cans, and probably yours too, represented only one style of beer: fizzy, light, straw-colored American adjunct-pilsner-lager. It should be noted that Little Switzerland's Charge Premium brand, introduced in 1968, was described by brewery officials as being an all-malt European style pilsner-lager, a rarity in an era completely dominated by adjunct pilsner-lager. Oddly enough, a variety of beer styles actually did exist in Huntington and other American cities before prohibition and for a brief period before WWII. In the 1930s Fesenmeier had responded to market demand by adding a dry-hopped English pale ale to its roster of beers. They also brewed a dark lager - what was effectively a schwarzbier. For Christmas season they produced culmbacher - a dark, hoppy lager style that originated in the German town of Kulmbach during the 19th century. And like many US brewers they made a traditional bock beer for spring. Bock Myth I get a kick out of an absurd myth that originated some time after WWII which says bock is made by "scraping the bottom of the tanks during spring cleaning." The myth persists to this day and some people still believe it. Any brewer attempting to operate like that would be out of business in a week. Fermentation vessels must be rinsed, cleaned, rinsed again, and sanitized between every single batch of beer, not once a year. Ask any brewer to name the two most important things about making beer, and their answer will invariably be cleanliness and sanitation.Bock Beer Bock typically ranges in color from copper to dark brown, with bready, malty flavors, mild bitterness and very little hop character. Some versions have dark caramel malts like CaraMunich and roasted malts like Carafa for added color. American versions before the craft beer revolution usually had some adjuncts like corn or rice added to the grain bill. Building the Collection My friend Chuck Dandelet got me interested in beer cans when we were kids after he started a collection. My Dad had a fit, but I persisted. Later I found a book at the library called "The Beer Can," written by members of the BCCA (Beer Can Collectors of America, now known as Brewery Collectibles Club of America). I learned from reading it that my hometown once had a brewery and it produced beer in cans. From that moment forward nothing was going to keep me out of the hobby, not even my Dad blowing his stack. My parents had some bad news when I told them about my amazing discovery: the brewery had been torn down some years ago. Not long after showing the book to Chuck, we were out hunting for cans and he found a West Virginia Light flat top can (with gold trim) under about 6 inches of snow. All our friends started collecting too and it got really competitive. My Dad soon warmed up to the idea of me collecting beer cans. Yet for some reason he would not allow me to join the BCCA. My Mom was very understanding. She even took me around to all the distributors in town to ask for beer signs (I think Dad took me a couple times as well). Everyone was more than happy to oblige me except the Pabst distributor, which was run by assholes.Every year when the new phone book came out I would immediately turn to the beer & ale wholesale section of the Yellow Pages to see if any new brands popped up. The local Stroh distributor, Central, also handled A-B products. The Falstaff people, Nessiff, carried Schlitz, Blatz, Carling Black Label, Colt 45, National Bohemian, Augustiner, Hudepohl, Burger, Mark V, and Peter Hand. Each of the remaining distributors mainly represented products of a single brewing company: Miller by Atomic, Pabst by Holiday, and Falls City by North Pole, which previously had also distributed Fesenmeier and Little Switzerland beers. I took advantage of every opportunity to add to my collection. The first big one and most memorable was meeting Mark Ferguson - BCCA #5836, who gave my then-pitiful collection a much needed boost of 35 cans, all of which are currently on display except for a missing aluminum Jax with rocket-bottom. (right) Me in my Huntington basement at 11 years old after meeting Marc Ferguson - BCCA #5836, holding one of 35 cans he generously donated to me.
On a few occasions I received surprise-boxes of cans in the mail from a relative. At grocery stores I'd head straight to the beer cooler and then talk a parent(s) or sibling(s) into buying a certain beer so I could have the can. I pulled cans from the dumpster behind a local Holiday Inn where our family swam for free (in the pool, not the dumpster) because the motel was owned by close friends of my parents. I found my first conetop at age 11 on Christmas Eve under the mausoleum of a nearby cemetery, a 1940s Duquesne IRTP Can-o-Beer produced in McKees Rocks, PA (only 10 miles from where I live now). As a teenager I returned to the mausoleum and found some 1950s Hudepohl IRTP cones after getting permission to search there from the cemetery caretaker Gary Sumpter, whom I'd known personally since I was 7 years old. His son Steve was a school mate and remain s a close friend.Vacations were a good resource for cans but due to the economy, we only traveled a few times after I started collecting. Friends and neighbors would return from out of town with a can or two. My 6th grade elementary school teacher brought me 3 cans from her trip to France. Even my Dad contributed a couple cans after covering sporting events out of town. (right) Can with "rocket-bottom."
My favorite hunting spot was in a local park just below a turnaround circle on a ridge top overlooking part of Huntington, the "lover's lane dump." I restored a few cans with oxalic acid, but if I knew then what I know now, I would have hauled away much more than I did.
Space, Or Lack Thereof My wife and I lived in Dublin, OH for more than a decade and bought our first home there in 2003. I built shelving in the basement for about 1,400 cans but the total space allowed for 3,000. It was during my time there when I learned certain vintage cans I believed to be tough were common as dirt. I wanted change that without building more shelves. My intent was to control the size of the collection by narrowing the focus to cones, FT, and SS. I also branched out by adding Fesenmeier and Little Switzerland breweriana. Space became an issue in 2012 when we moved to Mt. Lebanon, PA six miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Our house was built in 1946 and it's small. The cans are displayed in the basement and the bulk of them are on the shelves I built in Ohio, which I altered to fit since the ceiling is just under 7 feet high. That alone cost space for 128 cans, leaving me with shelving for just over 1,200 cans. For the first 7 years until Covid hit I was playing music on the road more than ever and didn't add many cans, though I did net about 20 flat tops after trading guitar picks for cans a few times with a fan of a band I was in. I've continued acquiring Fesenmeier and Little Switzerland breweriana but that only goes so far due to the space concerns.(left to right) Steve Theado and me on tour with American Dog somewhere in the United States, possibly Hampton Beach, NH. By the way, my stage name is Vinnie.
From 2012 until 2023 I was under the impression that I'd maxed out the can display space at my house in Mt. Lebanon. My musical collaborator / former bandmate from American Dog and Rat Bastard Syndicate / and beer can & bottle collecting buddy Steve Theado thought he too had maxed out the space at his house in Columbus, OH. In addition to being an outstanding guitarist and songwriter, Steve is also a skilled carpenter. During the height of the pandemic he found that the ceiling space in the stairway leading to the basement band room had nothing above it. So he ripped it out and added shelving there and along the sides for cans and bottles. That's not all. He's also added new shelves in all four basement rooms in places he never expected to use. I've made several visits to his house during 2023 and 2024 and after seeing how he is conquering the issue of space, I've realized I can expand my collection too. Inspired by Steve, I've added shelving for almost 250 more cans in places I never dreamed of displaying them. About 70% of my beer cans are in a finished room that doubles as my office / multimedia desktop-recording studio / entertainment area. Here I've added shelving for 68 cans with plans for more. (left to right) Steve and I on tour with American Dog, backstage before a show at Irving Plaza in New York City.
The rest of the collection is in the adjoining laundry / brewery room. Actually, my brewing currently takes place in the kitchen, but I plan to start brewing in the garage soon. And since hot weather is the only concern out there, I can simply brew in the kitchen when the temperature outside demands it. The laundry room is where all other brewing-related activities take place: fermentation, cleaning, sanitizing, bottling, and storage. The cans in this room consist of 12 and 16 oz aluminum craft cans, domestic 7 and 8 oz, "tall" domestic 12 oz, domestic 16 oz, Australian 25 oz (710 ml), domestic and foreign gallons (5 liter), private labels, Billy cans, and a few misprints. To accommodate the cans I added several one-tier shelves in high spaces and along the duct work, plus a small 2-tier shelving unit built exclusively for the 7 and 8 oz cans.
In the meantime, Steve and I have been trading cans with each other as well as acquiring them from other sources. In less than a year I added almost 300. That number is dwarfed by the amount Steve added!(right) Partial view of stairway to the band room at Steve's house. The picture doesn't do it justice!
Further Expansion The overall goal is to gradually add enough shelving in my basement to expand my collection to 2,000 - 2,500 cans. In the meantime, to make room for new additions, I've been putting certain aluminum cans in storage for the time being, over 100 so far, plus some steel cans with minor differences from those on display. Once I have the space to house the aluminum cans they'll go back on display, but separate from my steel cans. In the event I max out the space once again, all those cans will go right back into storage. More About My Cans I've reached the conclusion that I can't really put forth the time, energy, and expense of making cones and FT cans a priority. However, I am able to expand my number of SS cans in an impactful way, which is why that is now my area of focus. Straight Steel I only add SS cans that appeal to me aesthetically. FT cans are always welcome. Cones are a bonus. CS and two-piece DIS cans are ok but I don't seek any new additions except for foreign cans and occasionally a few US cans.
I do collect and display private label cans like Shopwell (pictured below - right), which were made for supermarkets, liquor stores, and drug stores. But cans made for collectors in the 70s, 80s and beyond that commemorate events, anniversaries and other interests do not appeal to me, though I do have some examples on display. I'm talking to you and your friends, Bean & Bacon Days can!
Aluminum As for aluminum cans, years ago I developed a bad habit of buying beers like Koch's Golden Anniversary (Genesee - circa mid-90s - pictured below) just because the cans were different, not because they looked nice. In fact, many were quite unremarkable, ugly even. It was less a case of going for quantity
over quality and more a case of trying to stay enthused about the hobby in general. Although the aim is to thin-out my all-aluminum "legacy brand" cans to store for another day, some remain on permanent display because they have aesthetic appeal or some kind of sentimental / historical value. Well-meaning folks continue to give me craft cans, either forgetting or not realizing that I don't really have space to display them.While I prefer the physical look, uniform shape, and stability of steel cans, I do have some favorite aluminum cans. Most happen to be from the 70s and early 80s. Among them are Heidelberg, Heilemen's Old Style, Keg Brand, Olympia, SGA (pictured at the top of this page), Lucky Light Draft and many more. What these cans have over modern designs is a nice background color, usually white, which covers the entire can from the top to the base, similar to steel cans. Sometimes the graphics aren't so great but the cans are still pretty. The background color hides the dull "sheen" that aluminum cans have. One great modern example of what I'm talking about are the first cans issued by Sweetwater Brewing, also Terrapin's Moo-Hoo Chocolate Stout (both pictured below). They really are beautiful, harkening back to the 70s and 80s cans I described before. Each has a different background color and the graphics are solid. There are others of course. These are just the ones that came to mind.
Labels for steel cans were printed on flat sheets, with several labels per-sheet. Then they were cut and rolled. This allowed for fine graphics and durable inks. But once the drawn & ironed steel and aluminum cans were developed, it was no longer possible to print can labels that way. Instead, the cans had to be made first and then printing was applied directly to the cans. Printing on aluminum presents special challenges, and today only large or well-financed brewers can afford to print on cans, let alone hide the aluminum sheen. Few choose to hide it. A large number embrace the silver aluminum color and make it part of the label.
Craft Cans Craft cans in general are colorful and artistic but many just don't have the charm of vintage cans. Speaking strictly as a consumer, the actual "branding" of some craft breweries is highly questionable, regardless of how eye catching and pretty their cans are. When I go to buy canned craft beer I don't like searching all over the can to find out what style it is. Usually it turns out to be yet another hazy IPA in an ocean of hazy IPAs. But pretty as the cans are, the branding is often so terrible that I have to resort to looking at the shelf tags to determine the style of beer, and sometimes even that is not enough.Over time I've learned to recognize the artwork of several local breweries. Notice I said artwork, not labels, because they're more like art instead of labels. I'm not sure that's the way to reel in new consumers. It certainly hasn't reeled me in. I'm completely turned off by it as a consumer buying beer to drink and enjoy. Sometimes the collector in me is also turned off by it, though I do have some examples of "label art cans" on display. (right) Example of label art, a beer from Weathered Ground in Cool Ridge, WV called #Camplife. One must look on the back of the can and and read a tiny paragraph to see what kind of beer it is.
Paper labels have appeared sporadically as far back as the 1950s. Those along with shrink-labels have allowed thousands of small modern craft brewers to package their beer in cans. A handful of paper labels have even knocked me out to
the point of saving the can, including two from Wigram Brewing in Christchurch, New Zealand -Mustang Pale Ale and Jetpack Double IPA.(left) Reverse of #Camplife can.
Shrink-labels look as good as the best steel cans in terms of graphics but I'm not sure I want a whole room full of them. Shrink labels have been known to peel off by themselves. Many folks report finding cans with a very different label underneath. I know of one instance where a St. Bernardus label peeled off on its own and underneath was, quote - "a Japanese brand, not from Bernardus!" If I had to choose between printing on the cans themselves, paper labels, or shrink labels, it would definitely be for printing on the cans. With paper labels and shrink labels on the rise, the beer can is at yet another crossroads, but many brewers will continue to print on cans for the foreseeable future. The good news for collectors is, the beer can appears to be here to stay. Gatekeepers Gatekeepers are creatures who decide what others must do in order to be part of a community. Gatekeepers are in EVERY hobby, including beer can collecting. They forget (or refuse to acknowledge) that hobbies are supposed to be fun, and people take them up for their own reasons. Each hobbyist gets to decide what it is about their hobby that makes them happy. I'm a homebrewer as mentioned previously, and gatekeepers in that hobby can be quite vicious (mainly in the United States, where they don't consider it homebrewing unless it's hard to do). Gatekeepers of the beer can hobby are mostly concerned with the dollar value of cans. They'd say my collection isn't worth a hill of Bean & Bacon Days cans because I have too many cans from the 1970s, which some affectionately refer to as "70s-Shit." They'd claim I put quantity over quality, which may have been true when I was 10 years old, but not today. Some gatekeepers of the beer can hobby describe themselves as "older guys" with "disposable income" from so-called "real jobs." Some of them are dealers who run beer can websites. To be sure, not all dealers are gatekeepers. A long time ago, the hobby of vintage cans turned into a business. This outcome was inevitable, despite the best efforts of the BCCA to keep money out of beer can collecting in the early days. It happens in every hobby that involves collecting. It means collectors like myself who don't (or didn't) have "real jobs" and no "disposable income" have almost no chance at buying vintage cones, flat tops, and yes, even some 70s-Shit cans without paying through the nose. Many pre-70s vintage cans are rare, but some are grossly over-valued. I won't pay more than what I think is a fair price for a can. Antique shops are the worst at over-valuing cans, so I avoid them for the most part. Honest dealers have reasonable prices and shipping rates and will happily combine shipping charges to help buyers save money. I'm wary of those who don't. Check out the videos below and / or visit my homebrewing channel on YouTube.
(click the YouTube icon below to visit my channel) Full disclaimer: I have no aspirations to become the next YouTube homebrew star. My channel is strictly for "show & tell" so that I can share my homebrewing adventures with brewing friends worldwide. I don't actively seek new subscribers. If I did that I'm sure I'd have more subs, but then I'd also be obligated to provide content on a regular basis. Even though I brew 2 to 4 times a month, I can barely crank out more than half-dozen brewing videos a year due to my schedule. The small hop freezer seen in the video about my Basement Brewing Area has been sold. I now have a full size fridge / freezer. The second part of the Schwarzbier tasting video shows part of my can collection and places where I've added new shelves, and where I plan to add more. For instance, on the video, directly behind me in the area with the West Virginia bottle cap trays, I've since added shelving for 52 cans, as seen in this photo here on the right. Enjoy the videos...In the meantime, updated photos of my beer can collection have been posted below in "Gallery 2 - 2024."
The 6 photos in this gallery were taken in 2015. A lot has changed since then. I've added more shelving with more to come (see article above). And in 2016 I started homebrewing beer again after a long absence from the hobby. That little fridge has been replaced by a full size fridge, complete with hop freezer. I also have two additional fridges for fermenting beer, allowing me to control fermentation temperatures. CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE
The 22 photos in this gallery were taken in 2024. Notice that my office / multimedia desktop-recording studio has moved to the other end of the basement. This was due to a leak in the ceiling which came within inches of my workspace. The leak was caused by a faulty dishwasher in the kitchen above. All US "legacy" cans are alphabetized by brand. Foreign cans are arranged by country and alphabetized by brand. Craft cans are alphabetized by brewery. CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE
FERMENTATION FRIDGES & BEER FRIDGE / HOP FREEZER
CLICK PHOTOS TO ENLARGE BEST COLLECTING MEMORIES
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