The Conrad Budweiser

I first saw this bottle in my dad's garage in the late 1970s.  He had a few bottles in his collection of old beer memorabilia (steins, mostly), this being one of them.  It is a Conrad Budweiser bottle, which, according to my personal bottle guru, Rob Mooers, is a "good" bottle.

This is a well known and somewhat sought after bottle in collectors' circles.  Quite a bit is known about this bottle, too, as it goes right back to the origins of Budweiser in the US.  According to the online article THE DATING GAME:Tracking the Elusive Monogram Carl Conrad & Co., Olean Glass Works (Co.), and a Man Named O’Hara, by Bill Lockhart, Pete Schulz, David Whitten,Bill Lindsey and Carol Serr, this bottle was produced between 1876 and 1883.  It's an interesting paper that cites the various studies on early Budweiser and this bottle in particular.

When I was about 16, my dad gave my brother Greg and I each one bottle from his collection.  Neither of us received this one, and it was always in my mind that Dad still had a very old Budweiser bottle in a box in his garage somewhere.  Dad gave me this bottle in 2008 as he began parceling out his possessions.  Greg had passed away by this time, so there was no longer a dispute about who should have the bottle.

The shot above shows what bottle collectors love about their old bottles, namely the character imparted when they were handcrafted.  In the full sized view of the picture above, you can clearly see that this is an applied top: the mold seam stops at a drippy edge under the flared collar, indicating that an extra little blob of glass was placed on the main bottle after it was freed from its mold, then shaped by the person in charge of tooling the top.  You can see a slight twist in the neck and there are clearly visible horizontal streaks in the upper part of the lip.  These things, the bubbles in the glass, along with this bottle's history, make this a nice addition to the collection.  Personally, though, I like this bottle because it came from my dad.