Dating old beer bottles

Contents:
  1. Historic Bottle Website - Homepage
  2. Date Your Glass Soft Drink & Beer Bottles
  3. Dating Antique Bottles
  4. BOTTLE MOLDS AND SEAM DATING:

The picture to the left shows that the base of this bottle does have the distinctive "Diamond O-I" marking just under the "7". The "I" can appear as a dot in the middle of this mark like with this bottle, though on most it is a more or less distinctive "I". Reading down through the narrative in Question 11, we find out that the number just to the right of the Diamond-O-I mark is the last two digits of the year the bottle was manufactured, which on this bottle is a " 46 ". So at this point we know that this bottle was made in A user need go no further through the Dating page questions to refine the date further.

However, for example sake we will continue through the questions. For more information on Owens-Illinois marks, see Bill Lockhart and Russ Hoenig's a retired senior engineer for Owens-Illinois recent work - available only on this website - at the following link pdf file: Question 12 deals primarily with cork versus screw top closures.

This bottle has neither of the closure types noted; it instead has a crown top. As the information under this question notes, ACL's in the U. By considering the dating information arrived at above - excluding the makers markings on the base - we can still make a reasonable determination that this bottle almost certainly dates no earlier than ACL, lack of bubbles and could be as recent as the s straw tinted colorless glass.

The makers mark cinches the date in the s of course, but without this marking the bottle date could not be refined further. This site contains very limited information on specific companies that utilized bottles; such information is impossibly beyond the scope of this or any site or book.

However, if more information were desired a quick search on the internet using the words "Mission Dry Corporation" the embossing on the base would lead a user to an assortment of information indicating that the company was bottling as early as , that its primary product was soda water, that these style Mission bottles date into the mids, and miscellaneous information about specific company products like cans, labels, etc. One of the top returns on the search list would be the "e-Book" entitled Bottles on the Border: This e-Book is now posted on this website and contains an extensive amount of information on soda bottles in general as well as specifically to those used in West Texas.

Historic Bottle Website - Homepage

Click Historic Bottle Related Links page to find links to the assortment of pdf files that comprise this printable e-Book. There are no sharp lines to the bottle, just rounded corners and features. This question asks if there is either any embossing on the bottle or if there are mold seams present on the body, shoulder, or neck.

A thorough search of the bottle glass surface finds no embossing and no apparent mold seams anywhere. The answer to Question 1 is " NO ", indicating that this bottle is either free-blown, dip molded, or from a turn-mold. The user is now directed to move to Question 3 which differentiates unembossed, seam-free bottles into several categories.

Date Your Glass Soft Drink & Beer Bottles

Since this bottle is not cylindrical the answer to Question 3 is "NO". We now know that this bottle was either a free-blown or dip molded and that it is highly likely to date prior to - possibly much earlier. As the picture below right shows, this bottle does have a blowpipe or "open" pontil scar on the base. See the pontil scars page for more information. The blowpipe style pontil scar puts the date of this bottle as no later than approximately and does indicate that it could date back to or even before. The overall crudity of the bottle would indicate a manufacturing time on the earlier end of this range.

Thus, our Dating key derived age range for this bottle is to , with a high likelihood of dating prior to This bottle keyed out much quicker than the first example because this is as far as the dating key goes for free-blown bottles. This early American-made bottle was free-blown not dip molded most likely at a New England glasshouse between and References that could be consulted for this information include: This example will date two slightly different examples of the same patent or proprietary medicine Hall's Balsam for the Lungs to illustrate how the Dating page questions can differentiate the age of different versions of the same type bottle made for a lengthy period.

The embossing on both bottles is relatively flattened and not particularly "sharp. It is apparent that the answer to Question 1 is " YES " since both of these bottles have embossed lettering which indicates they are molded bottles; they can not be either free-blown, dip molded, or from a turn-mold. The picture to the right is a close-up of both bottle finishes.


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  4. Antique Beer Bottles.
  5. DATING BOTTLES BY THEIR TOPS AND BASES.

It shows that the side mold seam on both bottles stop well below the top of the finish. On close observation it is apparent that neither bottle has a ground down top surface to the finish. This yields a " NO " answer to Question 2 and we now may conclude that these are both mouth-blown bottles almost certainly dating prior to The user is now directed to move to Question 4 - the first question in the section of the key that deals with the dating of mouth-blown bottles.

Dating Antique Bottles

This question deals with whether the base of a bottle has a pontil scar, and if present, what type of pontil scar. The pictures below show that neither of these bottles have any evidence of a pontil scar on the base.

Dating your beer bottles ( ^x^)

So the answer to Question 4 is "NO" which yields an earliest manufacturing date for both bottles of about At this point in the Dating key we can be confident that both bottles date somewhere between about and The user is now directed to move to Question 5 , which deals with way the bottle was finished, i. Click on the picture above to see more distinctly where the side mold seams end on the two bottles.

This is the point in the Dating key where our two bottles diverge from each other. Bottle "A" has a side mold seam that distinctly ends right at the base of the finish. There is also a "drip" of excess glass on the left side of the neck that appears to have flowed from the base of the finish onto the upper portion of the neck. Given these two diagnostic features, the answer to Question 5 for bottle "A" is option A - this bottle has a "true" applied finish which very likely dates "A" as no later than to We now have narrowed bottle "A" down to a high probability date range between and Bottle "B" differs from "A" in that the side mold seam ends a quarter inch below the lower edge of the finish and there are horizontal, concentric tooling rings around the upper neck and finish "wiping" out the mold seam.


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  3. Glass Bottle Marks: Glass Manufacturers’ Marks.

If one looks closely at the middle portion of the neck on bottle "B", there is a slight bulging out towards the outside of the bottle of the inside glass surface. This is a common feature resulting from the action of the "lipping" or "finishing" tool. This bottle clearly has a tooled finish which makes option B the correct choice for bottle "B" under Question 5. This feature makes it likely that this bottle dates from or after the late s. We now have narrowed bottle "B" down to a highly probable date range of the late s to The user is now directed under all of the Question 5 options to move to Question 6 , which deals with diagnostic base features.

This question asks if there are any mold seams within the outside edges of the bottle base. Click on each of the bottle base pictures to the left and it is apparent that both bottle "A" and "B" have mold seams on the base. This yields a "YES" answer to Question 6 for both bottles and suggests a date of about to as the latest date that these bottles would likely have been manufactured.

Under the "YES" answer for Question 6 there is more dating refinement possible based on the type or orientation of mold seams on the base, as follows: This yields a likely date range under this question of between and the mids for non-pontiled bottles like "A". At this point in the dating, the overlapping date ranges from all the questions gives the user a narrowed probable date range of to the mids for bottle "A". At this point non-pontiled base, post-bottom mold conformation, tooled finish we now have a probable date range of between the late s and for bottle "B".

The user is now directed to move to the last question in the Mouth-Blown bottle section of the Dating page - Question 7 - which deals with air venting marks on the bottle surface. In addition, with the way glass flows when blown, the inside of the bottle would be much less angular and more round than the outside, further enhancing the strength. Catalog to access the page that links to all the scans of this very useful catalog. Beer bottles are listed primarily on pages This page is divided into just a few major categories since beer bottles did not have a wide range of stylistic differences: Each of the pictured bottles has a relatively short description and explanation including estimated dates or date ranges for that type bottle and links to other view pictures of the bottle.

BOTTLE MOLDS AND SEAM DATING:

Additional links to images of similar bottles are also frequently included. The array of references used to support the conclusions and estimates found here - including the listed dating ranges - are noted. Additional information and estimates are based on the empirical observations of the content manager over 50 years of experience; this is often but not always noted.

Various terminology is used in the descriptions that may be unfamiliar if you have not studied other pages on this site. If a term is unfamiliar, first check the Bottle Glossary page for an explanation or definition. As an alternative, one can do a search of this website. A printable, 3 page, summary sheet of the major beer bottles styles described here is available as a. During the first half of the 19th century, heavier ales were increasingly bottled and distributed in the eastern half of the U. Problems with spoilage confounded the long term storage and quality retention of beer making it a product that needed consumption fairly quickly after fermentation was complete.

Prior to the Civil War most of the beer produced in the U. These beer types were relatively high in alcohol and more highly hopped than the later - though enormously popular - lager beer styles. It is likely that much of the early production of bottled beer was for a heavy, high alcohol, non-carbonated product, i. There were various bottle styles used for beer during the first half of the 19th century, though the dominant theme seems to be short and squatty with a moderate length neck. This is indicated by the first three bottles pictured here, all of which represent styles that were most commonly used from or prior to the Civil War.