Beer Bottling in the Past and Present

Every beer lover knows that the best beer to enjoy is freshly poured from a keg or tank, drunk in a nice pub, in the company of friends. There are, however, sitautions where a freshly poured pint is not at hand. This is an occasion to open a bottle of beer. In the past, each beer bottle was a work of art which only the richest could afford. Every brewery tried to integrate its distinctive feature in the design of the bottle. Later, bottle design was influenced by striving at simplicity and mass production. All breweries used the same bottle, differing just by the colour: brown or green. At present, breweries more and more often engage artists and designers in developing new bottle designs. Thus, bottles are re-gaining the role of a beer brand symbol. Despite of such artists’ attention, no beer bottle is a product that lasts for ever. For instance, about 48 million bottles must be replaced annually in Plzensky Prazdroj only.

Where Do Bottles and Bottled Beer Come From?
Glass containers for storing liquids have been known since the times of ancient Egypt. There, usage of glass containers was limited only to the richest groups of population. In the Middle and Modern Ages, earthenware became far more fequent. Glass bottles for beer storage first appeared in the 16th century, yet still remained exceptional. Definitely, glass containers spread at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. The industrial revolution one hundred years later lead to their mass proliferation.

On the territory of the Czech Republic, beer bottling was first mentioned in 1841, in the brewery called U Křížovníků (At the Knihgts of the Cross) in Prague’s Old Town. However, the majority of breweries or beer sellers were using earthen bottles at that time. The oldest bottle in the history of the Burgess’ Brewery in Plzen was earthen. It was a bottle bearing the text BURGERLICHES BRAUHAUS 1842 PILSEN / KARL KMINEK BIERGESCHAFT IN PILSEN. It is dated to have originated between 1842 and 1874.

The need to store beer in bottles arose as a consequence of people’s becoming less thirsty. Those who have ever organized a beer party know how difficult it is to keep beer left for a later occasion. Therefore, bottles and bottling and filling devices were invented to transfer beer from a barrel and preserve its delicious flavour. People who did not want to keep running to a pub to have a jug filled could have the beer poured in bottles which they stored in a cellar to relish the beer later, with a Sunday lunch, for example.

Who Was the Owner of the Bottles, How Did They Circulate?
Two kinds of bottles were used in the past: brewery bottles and beer bottles. While brewery bottles were owned by a brewery (like today), beer bottles had no direct link to any brewery. They were owned by individuals, companies or associations that did not produce beer, such as publicans and hotelkeepers who transferred beer from brewery barrels to their bottles for further sale. Also, beer bottles were owned by bottling plants and warehouses for which it was easier and cheaper to bring beer in barrels and transfer it to bottles before selling it.

In the firt half of the 20th century, bottled beer sales volumes still did not exceed the sales volumes of barrelled beer. In practice, a seller (for instance, a grocer or publican) would purchase a beer barrel from the brewery and a bottling device, and would have a certain amount of bottles, needed to satisfy his customers, made by a bottle manufacturer. Sometimes the bottles were plain and cheap; sometimes they would be provided with a text if the seller were wealthy or self-conceited enough. Bottled beer would be sold in shops like today, or by traders specializing in bottled beer sale. Breweries filled beer in bottles, too.

Returnable bottles have been used since the very begining. Retailers collected them just like today. A customer buying bottled beer for the first time would pay a deposit on the bottle. Coming next time, the customer would bring the bottle, clean and washed, to have it filled with beer again. When a customer decided to stop buying bottled beer because he preferred his son to bring beer from a pub accross the street, he returned a clean bottle to the retailer receiving the paid deposit back.  

Bottled Beer from Plzen
The Burgess’ Brewery commenced bottling in 1887. Because of the growing demand of bottled beer, a bottling plant project was approved in 1899. The construction was completed in the same year and operation in the plant could be started at the beginning of 1900. Between World War I and World War II, the demand of bottled beer kept increasing. The bottling plant had to be extended and upgraded. New bottling plants were built in 1967, 1996 and 2006. The first bottling plant saturated the brewery’s needs for 68 years, the second one for 29 years only. After that, the interval shrinked to a mere ten years: the newest bottling plant was erected in 2006.

To carry beer, wooden boxes (baskets) were used in the past. These boxes resembled craftsmen’s toolboxes with handles. Each such box could hold 8 to 12 bottles. As well, there have always been crates, made of wood in the past. A brewery’s or bottling plant’s name was usually burnt on the crate. When transported over long distances, bottles were wrapped in straw and arranged in closable boxes.

Beer Bottle Design
Till 1875, an only unit of volume had been known: “holba“ of the set of liquid measures of Lower Austria. Holba accounted for approximately 0.7 l. On 1 January 1876, a litre was introduced as one measure within the decimal system. Since then, 1l or 0.5 l bottles have prevailed. The most common shape, used as the inspiration for all other bottles of specific shapes, was a cylinder. An overwhelming majority of beer bottles produced since 1870 were of cylindrical design. Another type, common especialy in Northern Moravia and Eastern Bohemia, had an elongated body and short neck. Besides these two frequent designs, so called „porter“ bottles or curiosities such as bottles shaped as teardrop or flask were sometimes used.

Branding and labelling is an interesting aspect of bottle production. The cheapest bottles had no branding. In the past, moulded embossed branding was fequent. Alternatively, the branding would be etched, sand blasted, cut, printed or scraped. Some breweries have recently begun using embossed branding again, together with new bottles. Perhaps the best-known example is the newest Pilsner Urquell bottle, provided with an embossement of the brewery’s gate on its back side. Whatever the sign was, its only purpose was to make the product distinct and, possibly, to offer a customer a feeling of exclusivity. Paper labels appeared as late as the last quarter of the 19th century.     

Paper labels simplified circulation of bottles of the same type. Mainly smaller-size breweries were thus enabled to use recollected bottles, irrespective of who put them in the market. Also, paper labels make change of design easier. A label is a means how to provide information, but also it is an inseparable part of a brand perception and presentation.

The current Czech beer market is satured with beer of sufficient volume, and with quality products, too. Marketing specialists and traders are well aware that a „mere“ quality ceased to suffice long ago. In making a choice, a consumer is largely influenced by packaging: the bottle, the label, etc. Therefore, many Czech breweries have lately re-commenced introducing proprietary bottles with original design, including embossements and label and crate innovations. This happens not only in large breweries. Middle-sized breweries are now undertaking packaging changes, too.

Travelling Bottles
A standard returnable beer bottle hits the road towards a customer 25 times approximately. After that, it breaks or is damaged heavily and must be recycled and used for new production of glass. Estimations say that Plzensky Prazdroj has to replace 48 million bottles a year. The total amount of bottles used by Plzensky Prazdroj’s plants is 140 million. The most of them are used in the Czech Republic; others must overcome a long journey to one of 50 countries all over the world. For instance, 37 million bottles (0.3 and 0.5 l) are used for Pilsner Urquell beer.

Are such numbers too abstract to imagine? All right, let’s put it differently. Every day, almost 2 million bottles of Plzensky Prazdroj’s beer are drunk in the Czech Republic. This means that more than 1,300 bottles of Gambrinus, Velkopopovický Kozel, Pilsner Urquell or Radegast are opened every single minute. To be able to fill such an amount of bottles and, at the same time, saturate foreign countries’ demand, Plzensky Prazdroj had to commission a new bottling plant last year. The bottling line has the capacity of 60,000 bottles per hour. Thus, the same line would produce a line of bottles 103 km long (reaching from the brewery to the statue of St. Wenceslas in St. Wenceslas Square in Prague) in 26 hours.

Sources:
Collections of the Brewery Museum in Plzen
Roháč, M.: Roháčův schematismus pivovarů a firemních pivovarských lahví Království českého, 2005.

For further information, please contact:
Ing. Jiri Hana, Ph.D.
+420 724 618 357, +420 377 224 955

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