Blob Top Beer Bottles

GJ found two “blob top” straight-sided, shorter-necked low-shouldered amber/brown 23-ounce glass bottles wedged between the ceiling joists in his 1890s house below APS. They were each slightly different and covered with 134 years of dust gathered in their final horizontal resting place amid the lathe and plaster. GJ had been installing a new ceiling fan a few months ago in the ground floor bathroom when these bottles saw the light of day after a century and a half. GJ’s house is one of the few original old homes in the “Hawley Heights,” a ‘speculation’ acreage with plans for many houses designed by entrepreneur Walter N. Hawley, who wanted to capitalize on the local land boom in 1887, a boom that disappeared after the early 1890s. And we have two remnants of that era in those two old bottles. What beverage did they contain? 

The bottles contained 23 ounces of beer each (compared to modern long-neck bottles which contain 12 ounces; a ‘shorty’ will contain 7 ounces), which had a higher alcohol content by volume than today’s average beer. Drinkers in 1890 really DRANK. The average alcohol content today is 5-6% by volume; the beer contained in these two bottles had an alcohol content of 5.5-7%. Beer was considered safer than water because of the prevalence of waterborne diseases; the alcohol used in the brewing of beer purified the water used. In both England and the U.S. in the 1890s more than 70% of the beers sold in bottles were mild ales. Lager came into style at this time because of the influx of German immigrants to the U.S. Draft beer was mostly sold in kegs. 

So, we have stronger beer in larger servings in 1890; it is assumed that the drinkers whose lips last touched these two bottles were up on ladders working on the ceiling joists while drinking. But their ages might have indicated stamina: the average drinking age in much of California at the time was legislated by municipalities or counties; it was 16 years. In other counties it was the advanced age of 18 years. Thus, we have young, tough, drinkers perched on GJ’s roof 134 years ago.

Beer was not bottled widely in the U.S. before 1873; the beer bottle was invented in the early 1700s in glass form, resembling wine bottles with long necks and sloping shoulders, “stoppered” by a plug. Beer was kept in kegs, stored in barrels, and until 1870 served at room temperature. By the very end of the 19th c., beer bottles began to look like modern bottles cast in a mold (not blown glass) with short necks and low shoulders, but GJ’s bottle is “transitional” as it is almost all cast in a mold but for the “blob tops,” which were globs of blown glass. These were not sealed with a metal top, but with a stopper; the ‘blob’ was functional because when these bottles were shipped by train or wagon, they had to be extremely sturdy, so as not to chip.

GJ is right to point out they are both different in the necks, and this is because by 1890, the U.S. beer brewing industry was huge, and bottle companies made special bottles for various breweries. One of the big bottle firms was Reed & Co., who also made the same 27-ounce bottle, most similar today to our “Bomber” bottles holding 22 ounces, “Belgian style” (1/6 of a U.S. gallon) called a deuce deuce or Double Deuce by “Zythophiles” – lovers of beer.

The color? They became brown before the modernization of the beer bottling industry because brown glass blocks out UV rays that make beer “skunky” (and also glass blocks out oxygen to keep beer fresher). Not as effective, but a signature of European bottlers, are the green glass bottles. Shorter, less voluminous brown bottles were made post-1930s to compete with the growingly popular beer can. Similar to GJ’s bottles, Coca Cola in the 1890s bottled Coke in the same shaped bottle but at 8”, also brown glass. Quite an evolution from 1800 BC when workmen between the Tigris and the Euphrates sipped beer through straws from Sumerian jars.

You might ask what “shoulders” on a beer bottle are for. The beer bottle was designed with that shape for a reason; upon that internal slope would rest captured residue and dregs (pre-filtering technology), so that when you pour the beer it is ‘cleaner.’

The value of the pair is $100, but the story is more valuable.