The full bottle cap holder. Read on to find out how it was made!

It wasn’t all that long ago that the craft beer explosion happened, but it’s hard to think back to when beer—at least in my life—was a choice between Budweiser and Miller products. While I’m sure there’s debate aplenty about the community that formed around craft beer, you can’t dismiss all of the awesome artwork that community has produced. One of the best design ideas I’ve seen spreading around the Internet has been beer cap holders. They come in many sizes and shapes—usually states and countries—and are an artistic way to keep track of which craft breweries you’ve sampled fizzy drinks from.

The fact that most of these holders were laser cut was only part of the reason for my interest; many of the examples I saw had different amounts of studs to grip the bottle caps, and I wondered which one was the best solution. Sure, I could’ve done the research and stopped there, but that’s not nearly as much fun. A bottle cap holder I would make!

A stack of prototypes, some with six studs and some frightfully too small.

In my research, I learned that most pop caps (and the twist caps based on their design) have 21 teeth. Despite this, my first few prototypes had six studs. Once I realized they didn’t fit very well on the teeth of the caps I redesigned to include seven evenly distributed studs. I also experimented with stud design, settling on trapezoids after rectangles were too tight and triangles were just a little too loose. This mission to match the studs with the cap teeth would eventually cause me an issue: Goose Island’s caps have 27 teeth! Every other cap I had was only 21. While some size variance made some caps tighter and some caps looser, only Goose Island had to sit this one out. I hate geese anyway.

Bottle caps have feelings too. Look at how well the studs fit between the teeth!

Once I had a single cap holder squared away, I spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to fit a grid of them into the word “beer”. I agonized over spacing, wanting to stick to some kind of grid without ending up with awkward, noticeable gaps. It wasn’t long before I realized I’d have to design my own letters based off of the grid rather than relying on otherwise well-made typefaces.

The initial design, with three caps per stroke. Way too big!

Another attempt, at a slightly more manageable size.

The final layout (apologies for how difficult it is to see!)

After a few attempts at grid-based letters that turned out far too large for the scope of this project, I ironically ended up back at a typeface: one I designed years ago based off of the bitmap version of Chicago present in Final Fantasy VI. Why not add a geeky touch? It also very easily solved the issue of making the letters fit on a grid due to its low resolution pixel quality.

Mounting holes and box joints.

Once I had the design complete, I whipped up a quick (and honestly lazy) box joint connection to hold two pieces together; the sign was very nearly three feet long and I couldn’t cut it out of one piece of oak ply. In hindsight, I should have engraved the sections of wood that held together each letter; they’re just a little too noticeable and wouldn’t be if darkened. I also inserted some small holes for screws that will eventually hold this a small distance from whatever wall it ends up on. A light sanding later and the finished piece was ready for caps!

Goose Island just had to have 27 teeth. Figures. Geese.

…As it turns out, I don’t have many caps. I’ll fix that!