I did some more work to get ready for our health inspection on Friday. I had to seal/paint the area near our hand sink which is located on the side of the cooler. And I've been working on what I call the Wall of Research and Development. Which is basically a bunch of beer bottles I've collected over the last decade. But, it was the contents of those bottles that ultimately was the driving force behind starting CCB. Wanting to make beer as good as those I've had from breweries across the country for my hometown residents was a big part of why CCB exists today. And I feel like I owe a lot to the brewers and breweries who also worked hard to live their dreams. The fruits of their labor were my education and indoctrination to craft beer and I do feel like today I am standing on the shoulders of giants with Cigar City as I sort through a decade worth of beer bottles and remember some of the great brews I've been privileged to try.

Anyway, sorting through old beer bottles was how I spent last Saturday night and I snapped a few pics of the work that will one day result in the Cigar City Brewing Wall of Research and Development:


The first part of the job is getting the bottles sorted. There is a wider variety of beer bottle sizes than you might think. I broke mine down into a few basic categories, usually for no better reason than that it made sense, to me. You have your basic 12 oz long necks, your heritage (stubby) 12 ouncers. Then you got the whole European 11.2 oz thing and all the tall German/eastern European bottles. The Brits favor short fat stubby bottles. And there are assorted whackadoo sizes from all over the world that just don't fit a category. Then you have the 750's which come in wide in amber, clear and green. Then you have the thinner 750's of both the corked and capped variety. Each type had to be sorted as best as possible.


12 oz on the left, assorted European and heritage bottles on the right. The top row has smaller format bottles, mostly 6 oz or under. It took nearly 3 hours just to sort everything and then remove duplicates and broken bottles.


I started by placing bombers first and that filled two sections as big as the one in this pic. I'm also using monofilament to create a barrier to keep the bottles from falling and bonking people in the noggin if the bottles are shaken. It's far more tedious a job than I imagined it would be, but I've grown sentimentally attached to these empty beer bottles and I figure I can give them an honest days work or two for all the yummy they have (most of them anyway) provided me.


Starting on the green 750's. This is the view from the bottom of my scaffold.


Damn it is dirty up here! Have to do something about that I suppose..... Who would like to guess how hard it is to drag a shop vac to the top of a scaffold that has broken wheel locks? I devoted 8 hours just to sorting and starting to get the bottles up and I am still not half way done yet. How do you end a long sweaty day when you don't even get home until 2 am.....


Ahhhh....that does it! Wayne's beer never tasted so good to me as it did at 2:30 am that Sunday morning! I slept like a baby and had a great Sunday. And I collected one more commercially produced bottle for the wall.

Cheers,
Joey R.